UK Government awards Greenpixie with £50k to tackle data centre emissions

The UK Government has awarded a £50,000 grant to Greenpixie in their effort to reduce data centre emissions by millions of tonnes per year.

The London-based startup calculates emissions data for companies that use cloud computing in data centres.

“This transformative technology has the potential to revolutionise the IT industry and finally address the absurd levels of waste in the cloud,” said John Ridd, CEO of Greenpixie.

The company calculated that 30% of cloud use is estimated to be waste.

“By allowing unneeded computation to run in data centres, developers in the cloud are essentially heating empty homes,” added Ridd.

The 100% Government grant will be provided by Innovate UK, the UK’s national innovation agency. Governed by council members, the agency supports business-led innovation in all sectors, technologies and UK regions.

Fashion entrepreneur, and social media influencer Victoria Magrath was an early investor in Greenpixie after seeing the connection between online activity and carbon emissions.

“When I considered the environmental impact of my social channels and website, and looked into the scale of this problem more, I became passionate about being part of the solution,” said Magrath.

This is not the first venture into waste reduction that Greenpixie has tackled. In 2022, the startup secured £250,000 in its first fundraising round, led by UK seed fund Ascension, and angel investors Christian Arno and Ross Johnson.

Greenpixie was said to use the capital for growing its Cloud NetZero product, which monitors carbon emissions within cloud computing. The platform is integrated with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

“Greenpixie has shown the power that an innovative idea can have when it comes to getting one step closer to tackling the climate crisis,” said Nico Albanese, Investment Principal at Ascension.

Environmental concerns surrounding the tech industry have become increasingly present within the industry. The Government Digital Sustainability Alliance (GDSA) expressed their aim to promote and progress knowledge and capabilities to deliver sustainable digital data and technology across UK Government and their suppliers.

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