Zero Carbon Capital
Zero Carbon Capital is a UK-based venture capital firm founded in 2019 that invests in pre-seed and seed-stage hard science companies tackling deep decarbonisation across Europe. The firm backs founders building hardware and scientific breakthroughs capable of reducing emissions by at least 0.5 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Notable portfolio companies include Levidian, Vema Hydrogen, and Cambridge Electric Cement. Co-founded by Alex Gawley, a former Google Director of Product, Zero Carbon Capital manages three funds and has made over 38 investments to date.
Focus Areas
Portfolio
2 companies in our directory
IONATE
HiringIONATE was founded in 2019 by Matthew Williams, Robert Ricci, and Luca Mezossy-Dona to modernise century-old power infrastructure through intelligent hardware and software. Williams brings 15 years of experience as an electrical and control engineer, having previously founded The Faraday Grid. The company's flagship product is the Hybrid Intelligent Transformer (HIT), a solid-state transformer providing precision power flow control up to 36 kV, paired with the Aurora Neuralis distributed control software for system-level optimisation. IONATE was named a front-runner in hybrid transformers by Cleantech Group's 2026 Global Cleantech 100 and featured in the IEA's 2026 State of Energy Innovation Report. The company closed a £3.3M seed round in 2022 led by IQ Capital, followed by a $17M Series A in February 2025 led by AlbionVC with participation from IQT and strategic investors.
Nuclear Turbines
Nuclear Turbines spun out of BAE Systems' Launchpad incubator and emerged from stealth in July 2026, founded in 2024 by former BAE principal engineer Jeremy Owston and Professor Tim Abram of the University of Manchester, in partnership with venture studio Empirical Ventures. The company replaces the steam turbine at the heart of a conventional nuclear plant with the high-temperature gas turbines used in jet engines and gas-fired power stations, heating compressed air directly using novel graphite-free reactor materials. Removing the steam circuit makes the plant compact enough to sit behind the meter on industrial sites, at data centres and in microgrids, and the founders argue it can cut generation costs to roughly a fifth of current levels. The £15M foundational round was led by IQ Capital, with Rhapsody Venture Partners, Zero Carbon Capital and Empirical Ventures, funding design validation, test rigs and the first fuel elements.