University of Birmingham hosts Dragons' Den innovation event for Net Zero Carbon Lodges

The Dragons' Den style event aimed to find partners to work with the University to design upgrades to five residential properties that will turn them into zero carbon demonstrator houses.

The houses, on the University’s Selly Oak and Edgbaston campuses, will serve to showcase technology that can potentially scale across existing housing stock in the Midlands and UK.

Pitches focussed on every stage of the project, from low-carbon building materials to decorative products, and from connected SMART technology to landscaping products. Solutions were judged according to their suitability to be retrofitted into the properties and their ability to provide realistic carbon savings and sustainability benefits. Companies ranged from long-standing, well-known brands, including Worcester Bosch, Autodesk, SSE, Schneider Electric, to new and dynamic SMEs such as Measurable Energy and Discrete Heat amongst others.

Panellists assessing the pitches included academics from the University’s Birmingham Energy Institute, Institute for Interdisciplinary Data Science and AI, and Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action as well as University leadership.

Trevor Payne, Director of Estates, said: “With this event, the University aimed to seek out innovative partners who can work and collaborate with our University’s world-leading energy, sustainability, and data science experts. Together we can combine our knowledge, our research, and our development opportunities to demonstrate that affordable Low-Carbon housing at scale is possible.”

This event, supported by net zero innovation company Innovation Gateway, forms part of the University's ambitions to create a Smart Campus, allowing us to harness academic expertise, world-leading research, technology, and innovation to tackle the global sustainability challenges.

Professor Martin Freer, Director of the Birmingham Energy Institute, said: “It was fantastic to see the sheer range of innovation that companies are developing, and to explore the opportunity of how this could be integrated into the development of the Net Zero Lodges. The Energy Institute is looking forward to being able to work with some of these companies, joining up their innovation with our expertise on the campus and wider regional projects.”

By bringing together the University’s world-class research with the rapidly growing climate technology space, the initiative will explore how to improve existing domestic and residential buildings in a scalable and affordable way. This, in turn, will support broader decarbonisation efforts in the UK complementing regional, national, and international aspirations.