Focusing on Scotland’s economic future in a challenging global landscape, the Scottish National Investment Bank’s annual conference will explore mission-led investment, innovation, and sustainability with keynote speaker Myrtle Dawes of Aberdeen’s Net Zero Technology Centre highlighting optimism at the opportunities ahead
THE Scottish National Investment Bank’s (The Bank) eagerly awaited annual conference, Investing with Impact: A Catalyst for Change, takes place on Monday, March 3 at Radisson Blu Hotel, Glasgow in partnership with The Herald.
The event will highlight the transformative role of mission-led investment in driving sustainable economic growth, innovation, and community development across Scotland.
The Bank is delighted to welcome as its keynote speaker Myrtle Dawes, CEO of the Net Zero Technology Centre (NZTC), a not-for-profit organisation whose principles and goals could not be more closely aligned than with those of the bank.
NZTC is guiding and shaping the technology revolution that will enable us to reach our emissions reduction targets, delivering commercial sustainable energy technologies that will help transform the energy landscape.
Heading up this unique organisation is Myrtle Dawes who joined NZTC in 2019.
A chartered chemical engineer with wide experience in the oil and gas and mining industries, Myrtle and her Aberdeen-based team are on a mission to discover and encourage young entrepreneurs and tech innovators to share their ideas and ambitions to develop and deploy new energy technology with NZTC.
With an established track record of delivering UK supply chain growth, NZTC is currently seeking an additional tranche of 10-year funding from the UK government with a decision due in the Autumn of 2025. Having exceeded its targets in the past decade, NZTC aims to deliver an additional £2.7Bn of gross value added (GVA) potential by 2035, as well as 1,500 new jobs.
It seeks to accelerate over 100 clean energy startups and commercialise more than 20 new technologies while at the same time enabling seven million tonnes of CO2e abatement potential.
“We’ve done it before”, says Myrtle. “We committed and delivered over and above our targets for the first round of government funding from 2016 to 2026. We know we can do it again.”
NZTC provides guidance and support to transform energy technology startups into fully-fledged businesses, through the organisation’s TechX StartUp Acceleration programme, attracting equity funding into this sector.
A particular feature of NZTC’s offering is its ability to support the testing and trialling of innovative new technologies in the supply chain and fast track their development and commercialisation. Co-funded by industry, rigorous real-life scenario testing of these new technologies is carried out on the assets of industry partners, ensuring their fitness for use in the field.
NZTC is also beginning to engage in substantial infrastructure projects that will revolutionise the energy landscape in the UK. Its Rapid Infrastructure Deployment Programme will be responsible for developing ideas around the proposed UK Hydrogen Backbone project as well as other national, regional and local projects in the UK that will accelerate net zero infrastructure.
Myrtle and her team are on the lookout for what’s next in the energy landscape. They call this ‘horizon scanning’, working to develop roadmaps of where net zero technology might lead us and providing strategic thought leadership about the direction of travel. This work has included consideration of floating wind innovation, the Hydrogen Innovation Initiative and participating in the Energy Transition Alliance.
But it is the key strategic projects that represent the core offering at NZTC in the UK; renewables and grid, low carbon hydrogen and alternative fuels, industrial decarbonisation and carbon capture and storage. “Our programme is designed to match in part Breakthrough Energy in the USA and the European Union programmes of support,’ Myrtle says.
‘Digital technologies will underpin and augment each of these focus areas through the use of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), digital modelling and data collaboration. Their use will drive the achievement of government priorities by lowering costs and emissions, increasing productivity, performance, quality and reliability.”
Myrtle is clear that at the heart of the success of the enterprise are the entrepreneurs with great ideas that need support to become reality.
“We are in the fortunate position of being the first to learn about some of the amazing technology that is being developed by true innovators. Whether they come from academia and our great universities, or whether they are industry veterans or engineers. scientists and inventors from other disciplines, anyone and everyone is welcome to apply for our TechX Accelerator programme.”
This programme is currently seeing 12 companies through the development process as part of the seventh cohort of tech entrepreneurs NZTC has guided. An eighth cohort is planned for later this year.
NZTC also works with universities to assess doctorate projects for promising intellectual property with potential applications in the energy industry. This will help academics spin out intellectual property into new startups, supporting them through mentorship, introducing them to industry and investor networks as well as finding pathways for support including engagement with the TechX Accelerator programme and potential grant funding.
“The energy transition is about more than technology; it’s about people,” says Myrtle. “Here at NZTC we help to link people and projects, joining entrepreneurs with their individual ideas to build a solution for engineering problems they may not have considered by putting them together with other entrepreneurs and their ideas.
“Some of these start off as very small proposals and become much bigger. We work closely with industry, and we understand their problems and we try to bring them system answers that produce results in the real world. As part of this, we’ve worked with people who have sold their flat and gone to live with their parents so they can work on their idea. We’ve supported them – and now some of them have global businesses as a result.”
It is NZTC’s field trials programme which unlocks supply and ensures that more emerging technologies from small companies and new startups reach commercialisation.
“The transition to net zero presents an unparalleled opportunity for economic growth. A key part of this transition is the need to develop, trial and scale net zero technologies in the UK,” explains Myrtle. “Yet, if the UK relies solely on market forces, the potential benefits will be significantly diminished. To capitalise fully on this opportunity, it is imperative that government, industry academia and investors collaborate to maximise investment and foster the growth of domestic businesses capable of competing in international markets.”
Attendees of the conference can learn more about the role NZTC play in driving forward investment for reaching our net-zero goals, along with discussions on scaling up businesses for international markets; how organisations can deliver success through encouraging the right culture; why impact investing really matters; and housing as an essential lever for economic prosperity across Scotland. Registration is free to all and is open until Wednesday 26th February.
For those who cannot attend in person in Glasgow, online registration is available as well to join the live stream.