Andrew is an Investment Director in the Kiko team, based in London, where he leads investments into cleantech companies which have technologies key to net zero, particularly in the fields of chemistry, engineering and materials.
I’ve always had a love of science and a belief that when applied to problems, it can improve people’s lives.
I’ve always loved science and chemistry in particular. I’ve always had a fascination with ingenuity, in both helping us understand the world around us and in its application in technology. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from some of the best professors in the world studying chemistry at the University of Oxford where I hold a first class MChem degree.
The challenge I saw whilst working for BP was that the world needed radical change.
After an internship, some time out, travel and work at the Olympics, I ended up working on the commodity trading floor at BP, helping to safely move vast quantities of oil, gas and refined products around the world. The size, scale and global reach of this industry and our dependence on it, stays with me to this day; But never far from my mind were the worsening impacts of climate change if it continued on the same path, and the more I learnt, the more I knew I had to do my bit to help the world change direction.
I took a risk to leave trading and go back to technology.
My realisation was a whole new set of technologies would be needed to recreate the energy industry without carbon emissions. I joined BP Ventures where I was responsible for identifying and investing in high-growth, early stage businesses which would help accelerate BP’s transition to low carbon energy. I supported and led deals in a variety of sectors including power, carbon capture & storage, forestry and building energy management and was on the board of C-Capture.
I loved my time at BP but I wanted to experience life on the outside.
After 6 years at BP, I got the opportunity to work at IP Group. I’m responsible for identifying the technologies key to the transition to net zero and building them into scalable businesses. The two main investments I’ve led to date are RFC Power, a novel flow battery chemistry out of Imperial College, and OXCCU, a University of Oxford spin-out focussing on CO2 catalysis to make e-fuels, e-chemicals and e-plastics.
Cheap, abundant energy but without a climate impact.
My goal is to enable future generations to have the benefits of abundant energy but without the climate impact. For this, we need new technologies, and fast. My goal is to try and find some of them and bring them to market. The sooner we source them, scale them and bring the costs down, the less the impact of climate change. And once we do find a way to live sustainably on this planet, the benefit is clear, we open up the potential for millions of generations of human flourishing.