UK climate tech investor Elbow Beach has made a £2 million seed investment in Ionech, an Oxfordshire-based clean-energy company developing a novel technology that generates electricity from the thermal energy of ambient air.
Ionech’s core innovation, known as the Air Voltaic Cell, uses high-voltage pulses and field electron emission to create superoxide ions, enabling the conversion of thermal and chemical potential energy present in the air into usable electrical power. The company is targeting applications with high and continuous energy demand, including commercial refrigeration, air conditioning and ventilation systems — sectors that together account for more than a quarter of global energy consumption.
The funding round is complemented by a £0.7 million grant from Innovate UK and will support Ionech’s transition from laboratory research to real-world pilot deployments over the next 24 months. The capital will also be used to advance joint development agreements with early-adopting partners, notably Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), where the technology could significantly cut the carbon footprint of drinks coolers and related equipment.
CCEP was an early investor in Ionech, which now plans to demonstrate its first commercial-ready system by 2027. Longer term, the company sees potential to scale the technology to grid-level applications, with the ambition of delivering megaton-scale CO₂ savings while reducing energy costs and reliance on electricity networks.
Jonathan Pollock, CEO of Elbow Beach, said the investment reflects the firm’s focus on transformative climate solutions with real-economy impact. “Energy demand is growing, driven by driven by among other things, cooling systems and AI,” he said. “Ionech is developing ways to harness clean energy from ambient air. Their Air Voltaic Cell technology has the potential to reduce reliance on the grid, lower energy consumption, and deliver tangible benefits across the real economy.”
Nathan Owen, co-founder and managing director of Ionech, said the backing marks a critical inflection point for the company, and “enables the transition from lab-scale development to real-world pilots, including initial work with CCEP’s cooler fleet,” he said. “It also accelerates our route to market and deployment across energy-intensive applications, such as HVAC and data centres, with the potential to reduce energy consumption, emissions, and reliance on the grid at scale.”
Joe Franses, VP of sustainability at CCEP, added that the partnership aligns closely with the company’s climate ambitions. “We continue to be excited about the potential of the technology that Ionech is developing, and how it could support CCEP in accelerating towards our sustainability goals,” he said.
If successful, Ionech’s approach appears to promise development in a relatively explored frontier in distributed clean energy — turning ambient air into a source of power for some of the world’s most energy-hungry systems.