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Carbon Trust and Catapult Venture Managers invest in innovative cooling systems company 4energy
16/09/2008
Carbon Trust Investments and Catapult Venture Managers Ltd have invested £1 million each in 4energy, a UK based company. 4energy’s innovative cooling systems have been proven to reduce the energy used to regulate the temperature of critical industrial electronic equipment by up to 90%. These technologies have been installed by companies such as Vodafone, EDF Energy and Scottish Power Energy Networks.
Telecommunication, computing and ancillary infrastructure located in equipment rooms needs to be kept at regulated temperatures in order for it to function correctly. The traditional approach has been to use conventional air conditioning systems such as vapour compression refrigeration, to maintain the correct temperatures. 4energy systems remove the need for installed air conditioning by using passive cooling technologies with few moving parts. This leads to increased levels of reliability and much reduced energy consumption and maintenance.
A great opportunity exists for 4energy to adapt these technologies for a wider international market, especially those countries with rapidly expanding telecommunications infrastructures such as India, China, Russia and Brazil.
Also, in the UK, energy for cooling of data centres and server rooms is estimated to be up to 15% of the carbon footprint of industrial buildings and the 4energy approach could also provide cooling solutions in these areas.
4energy will therefore use the secured funding to roll-out global trials of its telecommunication base station cooling technology, extend its distribution network and continue investment in cooling breakthroughs in significant areas such as data centres.
Jonathan Bryers, Investment Partner at CT Investment Partners said:
“With air conditioning a significant and rising cost to businesses around the world and companies facing increasing pressure to reduce emissions, we believe we will see increasing demand for 4energy’s technology in the years’ ahead. It has many attractions to businesses given the low capital costs and low cost retrofit capability.”
Pete Le Noury, Investment Director with Catapult Venture Managers commented:
“We originally backed this management team as an early stage investment and have been impressed with the way they have developed, trialled and installed their cooling technology with a number of significant infrastructure companies - clearly demonstrating large energy and CO2 savings. 4energy is now well positioned to roll out their passive cooling technology with global infrastructure partners and this investment allows the management to deliver against those customer requirements.”
Pat Tindale, Managing Director of 4energy said: “Increasingly we’re seeing a real desire from companies to avoid wasting energy on unnecessary cooling – they want to ‘try something different’. Since 2005 we’ve worked closely with customers to develop and deploy disruptive technologies to cool their equipment. It’s meant starting from first principles but now we can see these simple technologies being installed each and every day.”
Simon Mendham, Energy Manager from Vodafone UK said: “We’ve worked with 4energy for the last two years and they have delivered practical alternatives to our current cabin cooling solution. We’re installing their equipment across our UK network; this will be one of many initiatives that will help us meet our 50% CO2 reduction targets over the next 12years.”
Submitted by Sarah Crennell