Scottish Enterprise Green Heat Accelerator

Client

Scottish Enterprise

Challenge

Scottish Enterprise had needed to deliver an accelerator programme to support 12 ambitious SMEs to build their management skills, make connections and develop growth plans in the green heat sector in Scotland.

Solution

The Scottish Enterprise Green Heat Accelerator is a programme aimed at supporting a cohort of SMEs delivering products and services in low carbon heat, or those looking to enter and establish themselves in the sector, and who had ambitions to grow to deliver against the Scottish Government’s Decarbonising Heat in Buildings Strategy to help meet the target of 68% reduction in emissions from buildings stock by 2030.

CLT had recruited 12 SMEs into the programme, through wide outreach, application, and selection. The programme had run from October 2022 to February 2023 and had consisted of a mix of virtual and in-person networking workshop sessions alongside individual mentoring, with the aim of building leadership and management skills, making connections into the regional ecosystem, and helping the SMEs to develop their commercialisation growth plans.

The companies had covered a mix of technologies and roles within the supply chain, with heat pumps, solar thermal and biomass represented and a mix of technology developers, installers, design consultants and contractors.

The accelerator had lasted for 14 weeks, with 3 in-person workshop events. These had consisted of a mix of speakers, panel discussions and peer-to-peer activities. The first workshop had focused on the evolution of large-scale opportunities in the sector in Scotland and customer requirements, the second on the skills challenge and the third was a networking event for the cohort to connect with partners, investors and customers.

CLT had delivered two workshops per week during the 12 weeks of virtual workshops. These had covered topics to build skills across each area of the business (customers and markets, business development, finance, IP etc.) and to develop understanding of the green heat sector. The workshops were interactive and had consisted of masterclasses, industry speakers and peer-to-peer sessions. An online portal was set up for the accelerator and all tools and materials are available for participants to access and download if needed.

Each of the cohort companies were allocated a mentor – an experienced strategic advisor who had worked with them individually to develop their growth plans, provide guidance and make relevant introductions.

Progress against the growth plans were monitored quarterly for 12 months after the end of the programme, between March 2023 and March 2024.

Outcome

Engagement of the cohort has been very high, with good attendance at all the workshops and events. At the end of the programme, the SMEs had reported:

• 80% were likely to achieve new customers and/or partnerships
• 90% were likely to grow team
• 90% made useful connections
• 90% likely to engage with regional ecosystem for further support.

The first six months of post-programme monitoring had shown a 60% year-on-year growth in revenues across the cohort.

“Thank you to you and your team at CLT too, I’ve really enjoyed the course, the content and discussions and access to interesting speakers.”

“Mentoring was excellent and very supportive, having the opportunity to discuss growth plans and ideas, in an open, supportive and constructive way was extremely valuable to me at this stage of our business growth. It gave me the confidence to start activities that I might otherwise have delayed.”

“I felt the mentorship was great and the program team was very supportive. Peer to peer exercises between companies were great and it felt like the group had just normalised while the accelerator came to a close.”

“It was very well run, and I have made some really great connections. Looking forward to working closer with SE and the cohort.”

“I really enjoyed the session and probably got as much from it as the cohort did. I’ve made some useful new contacts within the low carbon market place and am quite excited about some of the technologies being developed.”

“Thank you for organising the event. It was great to meet so many early stage companies looking to address the energy problem. I would be keen to support future events like this.” (investor)

“It was a good workshop and I enjoyed the afternoon. It seemed liked a very engaged group and I had some interesting conversations. I’ll keep in touch with some of the organisations.”