Environmental contamination and climate change are pressuring the market to offer greener alternatives, both at technological and end-product level. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the UK’s Climate Change Act -which plans for a net zero UK in 2050- encourage and give incentives to those leading this important work. This situation has catalysed the development of clean technologies able to disrupt current practices and processes. Therefore, we understand clean technologies as the drivers of a green industrial revolution that will change the way we interact with the environment in coming decades.
However, it is difficult to find data on such novel innovations. Even though they represent a strategic asset for the UK, there is no existing database providing an aggregated view of clean technologies as a sector. For this reason, we have decided to produce an RTIC on CleanTech. We want to participate in the green industrial revolution by creating data that will support public and private enterprise to work towards the net zero target. For this purpose, we have adapted Statistics Canada’s taxonomy for CleanTech, which divides the industry in six main groups.
A taxonomy for CleanTech
- Environmental Protection: this segment addresses technology for environmental monitoring, bioremediation and recycling.
- Sustainable resource activities – energy: with this category we want to capture companies supporting clean energy by the development of more efficient technologies and/or technology able to produce energy from unconventional sources, like waste.
- Sustainable resource activities – water: here we target companies creating technology that improves water management, monitoring and treatment. Pollution detection or desalination technologies are two good examples.
- Sustainable resource activities – minerals: this segment groups the technology that make the extraction of minerals more efficient, minimises the negative effects of mining or offers substitutes to mineral-based materials. Biofuels are the best known product range for this vertical.
- Sustainable resource activities – agriculture, forestry and biodiversity: here we capture technologies that facilitate monitoring of wild flora and fauna, crops and livestock. Likewise, this group also captures all tech that contribute to a more sustainable production of food.
- Adapted goods: these address technology able to provide sustainable substitutes to everyday products. From bioplastics to new adhesives, these companies green provide products to end-users.
This classification is providing very good initial outputs that help shed light on the UK cleantech industry. We will be publishing the dataset on our platform soon, and sharing interesting insights on our website. So, if you want to know more about cleantech in the UK, reach out or keep tuned!