Cambridge Consultants steps up efforts in cleantech

“By establishing a focused campaign and making a number of strategic recruitments, we are clarifying our commitment to the cleantech sector,” said Craig Webster, Head of CleanTech.  “We are also investing in the key technologies that will enable our clients to develop the new wave of cleaner, smarter, and more sustainable products that their customers are demanding of them.”

In Cambridge Consultants’ definition, cleantech describes products or services that improve operational performance, productivity, and efficiency while reducing energy and resource consumption, waste, and cost.  

Globally, the  cleantech sector as a whole was worth $150 billion in 2006, and is predicted by the United Nations Environment Programme to be worth over $600bn by 2020. It comprises sub-sectors, including energy, transport, buildings and water. The same UNEP report suggests that investment in energy efficiency technology reached a record $1.8 billion in 2007, up 78 per cent from 2006.

Cambridge Consultants will work in each of these sub-sectors, with a primary focus on renewable energy, sustainable products to meet rapidly evolving market requirements, and sustainable transport.  

However, Webster notes that many of the principles of cleantech, such as high efficiency, low power, smart design, low cost, have informed the company’s work in a wide range of fields for many years.  

“From highly efficient electric vehicle drives and zero-emission diesel engines to extremely low-power single-chip microprocessors and smart meters, our raison d’être is to find the smartest, most efficient, and most highly optimised solutions for our clients,” he adds.

Webster cites as one example of bringing in technology to solve a cleantech problem Cambridge Consultants’ proposal to the UK Government to site holographic radar sensors on or near wind farms, filling in the radar-coverage gaps created by the turbines.

This is thought to be the only viable solution to the problem, and if implemented, would enable many of the wind farms currently held up in planning to be developed, vastly increasing the energy output.

Cambridge Consultants was founded in 1960 by two Cambridge graduates, Tim Eiloart and David Southward, who, according to Wikipedia, wanted to “put the brains of Cambridge University at disposal of the problems of British industry”.