Sustainable Ventures: How Europe’s biggest climate tech hub is innovating to save the planet

It will take big innovative ideas to tackle the climate crisis and transform Britain to deal with rising heat – many of them could be cooked up in a landmark London building left empty for 37 years.

County Hall in Lambeth used to be home to the Greater London Council until Margaret Thatcher abolished it in 1986. The building has sat vacant on the bank of the Thames in the years since.

Now it has been transformed into Sustainable Ventures’ London HQ, boasting to be Europe’s biggest climate tech hub. Sustainable Ventures, founded in 2011 by Andrew Wordsworth, spent £6.5 million renovating the building, turning it into a 40,000 sq ft workspace for climate start-ups and scale-ups.

Big Issue Invest, Big Issue’s social investment arm, played a big role in supporting Sustainable Ventures with a £3.4 million loan. Other partners include Lambeth Council and the Greater London Authority.

Now the building is home to around 160 companies, creating a community of climate-focused innovators with Sustainable Ventures acting as an incubator and mentor. The firm claims its London partnership has created and safeguarded 2,077 green jobs. 

Having so much green wisdom under one roof, Wordsworth tells Big Issue has offered opportunities for peer support and investment.

“We can bring investment opportunities by literally walking around the building,” says Wordsworth, a former engineer in the oil industry before pivoting into the early-stage climate change sector in 2002.

 “We have a similar sort of model to WeWork or something like that in that we’re providing flexible desks. But the big difference is that every company in the space is in the climate space. We’ve got people in the built environment, we’ve got people in food, we’ve got people in biodiversity; they all have a kind of common mission. So it’s very much a kind of community.”

Wordsworth says the cost of living crisis and the rise of Reform has changed how the race to net zero and the importance of action on the climate crisis has been viewed in recent years. And that has changed how climate-focused businesses have framed their work when looking for investment.

Sustainable Ventures’ know-how, as well as the support of a community of environmental businesses, is more vital than ever in current times.

“In the previous 10 years there was a growing political consensus in the UK. Everyone bought into net zero. That’s now fragmented,” says Wordsworth. “Even though Labour are sort of sticking to their guns, everybody’s quite nervous about Reform.

“It feels like for the first time in 25 years, the sector has started to go backwards a little bit.”

The language of climate tech has changed to match the political climate.

“We talk about jobs, green growth, economic development, productivity,” says Wordsworth. But the sector veteran still finds hope for the future in the businesses Sustainable Ventures houses.

He says: “It’s always quite inspiring when you meet somebody with a new technology, but actually it’s the individuals behind that.”

Find out more about Sustainable Ventures. If you are looking to invest with a social impact, or are a social business seeking to grow, contact Big Issue Invest

Read more:

• Scientists have found a way to convert plastics and CO2 into sustainable fuels using solar power
• Green transition: Help retrain gas workers or risk ‘cliff edge’ job losses, government warned
• Climate anxiety: What is it and how can you cope?

Businesses fighting the climate crisis from County Hall

Heat Geek

Aadil Qureshi tells Big Issue Heat Geek’s goal is clear: “Heat Geek is on a mission to change the energy system in everyone’s home from one that uses fossil fuels to one that runs on clean electricity, which is predominantly by using heat pumps.”

Heat Geek is training 130,000 gas engineers in the UK with the skills and tools to adapt to the new technology in a bid to speed up the rollout. 

Qureshi set up Heat Geek after becoming frustrated when trying to get a heat pump himself. Now the firm is aiming to make heat pumps easier to order and install, using AI tools to assess homes and calling on an army of trained and verified local engineers.

Being based at Sustainable Ventures means that small companies can “feel part of the bigger movement”, he says.

AirEx

AirEx spun out of Sustainable Ventures with the aim of fighting fuel poverty and climate change. That led to the creation of the firm’s flagship product: a smart air brick. Traditional air bricks are used in homes around the UK to boost ventilation and avoid moisture build-up.

AirEx’s smart solution has built in sensors to monitor conditions inside and outside the home and automatically controls airflow. That can reduce heating energy bills and also automate ventilating the property during heatwaves.

AirEx’s Agnes Czako tells Big Issue the smart airbricks have become fixtures in social housing across the UK, provided through the social housing decarbonisation fund. 

“Most of them are fully funded, so the residents didn’t have to pay for it,” says Czako. “And that is really just the start. We genuinely believe that it can scale a lot further.”

As for the relationship with Sustainable Ventures, Czako says “it’s like being part of a family… There was a lot of learning as we grew together.”

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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