Accelerating innovation for a clean energy future: Startups for the AWS Clean Energy Accelerator 2.0 announced

While climate change is the defining issue of our generation, we don’t yet have all of the technological solutions that we need to address this impending crisis. Without a major acceleration in new clean energy technology innovation, net-zero emissions targets are not achievable. The technologies available today support less than 40 percent of the CO2 reductions needed, and many of these technologies are not yet commercially deployed on a mass-market scale. This is an urgent call to action to accelerate clean energy technology innovation.

In response, last year, AWS launched the Clean Energy Accelerator to address this by catalyzing innovation and supporting some of the most innovative startups that are helping transform the future of energy. Today, a year later, a new cohort of clean energy innovators is being invited to participate in Clean Energy Accelerator 2.0.

I am thrilled to announce the 12 startups selected to take part in this cohort of the accelerator out of over 424 applicants from 58 countries—a testament to the widening of willpower and capacity to innovate in sustainability across vast parts of the planet.

• Barbara ioT Industrial equipment connected to the cloud while enabling cybersecure intelligence at the Edge through IoT technologies and blockchain.
• Cemvita Factory nature-inspired microbial solutions across carbon-negative biomanufacturing, biomining, and subsurface biomanufacturing.
• Hybrid Greentech  AI-driven virtual power plant increasing performance of energy storage by trading its capacity, accelerating 100% renewable energy.
• Power to Hydrogen P2H’s patent portfolio enables low-cost AEM electrolyzers to be built with industry leading durability and efficiency, solving the performance and cost challenges associated with producing clean, hydrogen through electrolysis.
• Rated Power Automating and optimizing the analysis, design, and engineering of utility-scale photovoltaic plants in all its stages through cloud-based solutions.
• Shifted Energy distributed energy aggregation software platform combined with edge devices that solves problems resulting from increased renewable integration through a distributed energy aggregation software platform.
• Sunai Optimizing energy production of solar plants more than 10% yearly. Neural, and AI-based SaaS, for real-time operational guidelines
• SwitchDin Enabling device-to-control-room management of diverse mixes of distributed energy resources through an exclusive technology-agnostic platform.
• UPowr provides a suite of platforms for system design CX automation and operations and aerial imagery, digital surface models, AI and algorithms generating hourly and yearly energy models
• Uprise developed the world’s first commercially sized portable wind turbine which is a 10kW wind turbine that fits in a 20’ shipping container and sets up in one hour to produce clean, affordable electricity.
• Urban Electric Power Urban Electric Power’s battery provides a low-cost, safe energy storage alternative that uses Zinc. At scale, UEP can produce batteries one third of the lowest cost estimates for lithium batteries by 2030.
• WindESCO renewable energy performance analytics, developed a cutting edge IIoT system that leverages intelligent sensor technology and deep ML to address industrial scale wind farm needs.

Strengthening the foundations for clean energy innovation

The selected startups will receive guidance in accelerating experimentation, expanding automation, and delivering deeper insights—using the cloud. Over the next five weeks, we’ll immerse these innovators with hands-on technical training in capabilities like machine learning, analytics, and high-performance computing. The final stop of this journey will be the AWS Clean Energy Accelerator 2.0 Innovation Showcase, where innovators from all over the world will gather in Lisbon, Portugal, for a day dedicated to accelerating innovation for a clean energy future. Register to join us in person.

Leading up to the Innovation Showcase, we’ll provide each of the selected startups with up to $100,000 in AWS Activate credit to experiment with transforming their data and operations in the cloud. To help supercharge their innovation capabilities, they’ll have the chance to dive deeper into Amazon’s own approach to innovation using the working backwards method. We’ll be providing them with mentorship from energy, technology, and investment subject matter experts from Amazon, European Innovation Council, WindEurope, Eurelectric, Baker Institute for Energy Studies, the Global Warming Mitigation Project, and others.

These startups will be facilitating low carbon energy transition along with leading energy organizations, and solving complex clean energy and decarbonization challenges. AWS is getting support from the global innovation consultancy Beta-i in the selection and support of this year’s participating startups.
 

A brighter future for clean energy

I’m excited to see startups from our inaugural accelerator already making an impact in their respective fields. e-Zinc, for example, is advancing long-duration battery storage by storing electrical energy within zinc metal, with hundreds of hours of energy capacity. Persefoni is advancing more intelligent carbon footprint management and sustainability reporting with their reporting platform. Ionomr is accelerating the path to cheaper hydrogen with exchange membranes and polymer solutions for fuel cell systems and electrochemical CCUS applications. I’m thrilled to watch our second cohort experiment and grow in the cloud, leveraging the AWS Clean Energy Accelerator for greater collaboration to guide this innovation.

Similar to technologies like quantum computing and artificial intelligence that were once accessible only to academics and researchers, clean energy technology development is now within reach to almost anyone with a passion for making energy cleaner, affordable, and accessible to more people around the planet. This is largely attributed to cloud computing and its impact on speeding experimentation and democratizing machine learning. Just like a generation of startups before them, such as Netflix, Lyft, Stripe, Slack, and Airbnb, who built on AWS and went on to redefine their industries, the AWS Clean Energy Accelerator is helping new innovators define the clean energy industry of the future.