Driving impact: Undaunted steps up to the climate challenge
Undaunted is Imperial’s convening hub for the UK climate innovation community, focused on creating new routes into green entrepreneurship and supporting the acceleration of start-ups and SMEs that are tackling our biggest challenges in climate change today.
Based between Scale Space at Imperial’s White City campus in White City Innovation District and the Grantham Institute at Imperial’s South Kensington campus, over the 12 years since it was established, this groundbreaking initiative has developed and refined its model for accelerating applicable, practical and adaptable solutions that can make a difference on a global scale.
Alyssa Gilbert – Director of Innovation at the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment and Director of Undaunted – began her career in climate policy and spent almost a decade leading translation for green innovation at Imperial before taking up her leadership role of Undaunted. We spoke with Alyssa about Undaunted’s founding aims and current projects and look ahead as it eyes achieving the next stage of its vision: a global climate innovation ecosystem of diverse innovators delivering significant emissions reductions and climate resilience, sustainably and at scale.
Q: Why was Undaunted established and what are its current aims and priorities?
AG: Undaunted was founded to make it easier to start up – and scale up – businesses developing and commercialising green solutions based out of London and the UK. The initiative was originally started in 2012 by Imperial College London’s Professor Richard Templer OBE FRSC FRSA, working in collaboration with Imperial’s Grantham Institute. At that time, there were a number of individual initiatives at Imperial aimed at supporting these companies, but it became clear that people with the talent to become entrepreneurs needed dedicated nurturing and specialist support to round out their technical skills with business skills.
It’s fair to say that, back then, entrepreneurship was not necessarily seen as a route people might take after completing a Masters, and the innovator support solutions that were available not being fully taken advantage of, so we really needed to establish a structure and put a proper support framework in place – and not only for those green solutions over which Imperial might have some IP ownership.
Initially, we began Undaunted with grant money provided by the EU. We worked closely with local and regional government from the outset, and we’ve had a strong relationship with the Greater London Authority and London Mayoralty ever since, because they absolutely recognise the opportunity for the green economy. We’ve always felt that universities should be intrinsically part of driving that first stage of growth for these businesses, and we have been working hard to create a network of innovation as part of a wider group of stakeholders who are interested in making London the premier place to do this. In 2024, we brought our entire support ecosystem all together under one umbrella and the Undaunted brand was born.
Q: What support does Undaunted offer to early-stage and growth-stage businesses in the climate sector?
AG: Essentially, we offer four core areas of support:
- Entrepreneurship support
We set up activities to support entrepreneurship and early-stage ideas, typically working with students in pre-accelerator programmes. We also run a popular annual ideas-stage green ideas competition called Climate Launchpad. This really helps in the search for ideas in the research space that can potentially become early-stage ventures. - Incubating start-ups
We offer a high-value accelerator programme, The Greenhouse, to support early-stage companies that promise potentially great impact, providing access to delivery support to facilitate the development of testbeds, proof of concepts and small prototypes – as well as up to £20k equity-free grant funding. We accept thirty companies a year into this pipeline incubation programme, taking them through everything from business training to exploration of business models. By the end of their year with us, most companies have successfully raised investment to take their ventures forward - Nurturing the ecosystem
Working with the GLA and other universities in the UK, we have led the creation of what is now a growing and vibrant climate change innovation ecosystem. A key workstream for this collaboration is our programme focused on policy related to climate innovation. An important part of our role is encouraging people to invest in early-stage companies, plus helping the government create the framework to support and drive that investment environment. - Making key connections
We have an excellent track record in bridging the gap between early-stage innovators, manufacturers and corporates, and strategic industry players. It’s vital for start-ups to be able to make fluid connections with organisations and people who are already operating in their target market areas, and we have the knowledge and connections to help create those strong links.
Q: What do you see as the key value and benefits of being located within White City Innovation District?
AG: Upstream Nexus – the partnership between London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and Imperial – has been incredibly useful in helping to build bridges between the various stakeholders in the borough, enabling start-ups to grow and share solutions to common problems. Another key asset is the vibe here in White City Innovation District, for example in Scale Space, where you have co-location of early-stage businesses across different industries benefiting from both formal networking and informal social interaction. Since the beginning, being in an area where we feel a sense of vibrancy that can fuel ideas and growth has been really important to Undaunted.
The state-of-the-art facilities and amenities available with the area are also really key. Wet labs are in high demand across the capital, as is office space combined with facilities such meeting rooms and private spaces than can support collaboration and growth. Early-stage start-ups need that flexibility, and White City Innovation District offers all of the required resources in a pretty unique setting.
Finally, being able to stay connected to an adjacent research community of academics is vital when it comes to product development and further testing for scalability and manufacture. That’s a big win for this district.
Q: Can you tell us more about the Earthshot Prize?
AG: Our collaboration with the Earthshot Prize is really exciting and highly complementary in terms of the message. In November 2024, in partnership with Undaunted, the Earthshot Prize announced a new global network of 17 initial members to drive collaboration between accelerators, incubators and other organisations supporting climate innovation around the world, with the aim of helping a wide range of climate start-ups tackle the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.
The plan is to rapidly scale up 10,000 eco-innovations over this decade, supporting innovators and entrepreneurs with an end-to-end global support ecosystem and offering access to the expert advice, technical resources, investment, customers and new markets these young start-ups need to scale and grow.
Over the next few months we’ll be working to understand what will be most useful to the companies in those programmes in terms of connecting with the international community. The overarching goals by 2030 is to have developed a rich network of hundreds of innovators who can take maximum advantage of this connectivity.
Undaunted has always been the ‘glue’ between concrete activities, and we work extremely hard to find the right modality and activities to deliver what climate innovators actively need in order to be successful. I’m proud to say that Undaunted has always delivered much greater value than the sum of its parts.
Undaunted is the ‘glue’ – we work hard to find the right modality and activities to deliver what climate innovators actively need in order to be successful. I’m proud to say that Undaunted has always delivered much greater value than the sum of its parts.
Alyssa Gilbert, Director of Undaunted
Images clockwise from top left: 1 & 2) Participants in the Undaunted Challenge Identification Workshop, February 2024; 3) Professor Mary Ryan, Imperial College London; Stephen Cowan, Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council; Réka Trón, Co-Founder & COO of Multus and Alyssa Gilbert pictured at the Jawdrop Summit, July 2023; 4) Alyssa Gilbert, Director of Undaunted
Q: What opportunities are there for organisations to get involved and collaborate with Undaunted?
AG: We’re always keen for people to get involved and we have a series of different programmes and competitions to enable them to do just that. For students in London, we run a Climate Entrepreneurs club, which is a programme for people who have a strong initial business idea but may also just want to explore what is involved with being a climate innovator.
We run the UK stream of the ClimateLaunchpad competition each summer – the world’s largest green business ideas competition – which potential entrepreneurs can apply for and access coaching support from the Undaunted network. We also have a specialist Masters programme for Cleantech Innovation (applications are currently open for the October 2025 start date).
Last but certainly not least, we have The Greenhouse Incubator, our climate accelerator which is currently open for application for Cohort 8. For this programme, we’re looking for teams with a breakthrough idea that has the potential for significant climate impact and commercial growth. This could be tech that supports either adaptation to the inevitable impacts of climate change or mitigation of climate change through the reduction or removal of greenhouse gases.
For corporates who are seeking help with research or innovation to achieve climate goals, we have a dedicated corporate programme and other potential routes to help companies with their sustainability challenges, so we’d encourage people to get in touch with us and explore the wealth of support available.
For project development in the built environment, our Better Future Retrofit Accelerator (BFRA) – run in partnership with Imperial Enterprise – focuses on decarbonising buildings and offers an invaluable gateway into the London retrofit market for climate start-ups. The BFRA is part of the Greater London Authority’s Better Futures programme, co-funded by the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, and is aimed at unlocking barriers to market entry, setting the foundation for a successful commercial scale-up, and significantly reducing London’s greenhouse gas emissions.
We’re always keen to work with developers who are willing to help with climate innovation, so anyone interested in this area should reach out and see what we’re offering.
Q: Can you share with us any exciting plans for the future?
AG: In terms of the overall climate change challenge, for ninety per cent of the things we need to do to address this, we have a technical solution. The major barrier, however, is the ability to implement these solutions at scale. For example, with electric vehicles, it’s clearly taken time for a technology that’s actually existed for a while to penetrate the market in a ubiquitous way and really work for people. For this reason, the bulk of the innovation is in making solutions practical, implementable and scalable.
A good example is in materials for buildings. We have a solution to eradicate the polluting effects of concrete and cement, however, such solutions still need rigorous testing, the establishment of workable supply chains, and bringing more into general affordability. Business model innovation is therefore a crucial component of any climate solution. I think there are many people who perhaps feel that they’re not ‘technical’ enough to be an innovator, but these challenges demonstrate that we also need talented business people and talented financiers to make these transformational changes happen.
Another area where we’re going to need considerable innovation is in mitigating the impacts of climate change. In London, increasing extreme heat and flooding are posing ever more urgent challenges, so we need to consider how can we manage these impacts and deliver greater innovation around resilience, including at a municipal or planning level.
One of the ways much-needed innovation could be delivered is through a really exciting project that we’re running, called the Climate Solutions Catalyst, which seeks to unearth neglected research that has the potential to be applied to climate issues. We’re combing through existing studies – using both machine learning (ML) and human analysis – to try to identify research with translational application and to see what ideas are already out there. It’s a great project, and we’re hugely interested to see where that can take us.
Ultimately, Undaunted’s mission is to deliver positive outcomes for the widest possible benefit. Our support is open and available for the public good – our door is always open for anyone to get in touch and explore ways to work together to fast-track green innovation and solve our climate challenges for the long-term.
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