RBS announces the pioneering green inventions that will be installed in the bank's buildings 

On Monday 10th November, 26 finalists in the RBS Innovation Gateway pitched their green inventions to a panel of judges, in a bid to test their new products in selected RBS buildings and branches in the UK. 

After a rigorous selection process involving innovators from around the UK and the world, the successful energy saving products and services have now been announced. 

The successful market ready innovators were HSG, Alquist, Raise Energy Solutions, Sunamp, Senselogix, Chalmor, Propelair, Datum Phase Change, Certero and Glaze who will all get the opportunity to test their products in RBS properties. The successful concepts were City Farm Systems, The Solar Cloth Company, Limetools, Reduse, Ripe Office and Powervault who will all receive a £3,000 grant and additional support to help move their concept to a garage tested/market ready product.

The RBS Innovation Gateway, which was launched in March this year, has three aims; to help RBS save more energy, water and waste; to nurture new, brilliant ideas and help local innovators and SMEs to accelerate their ideas to market. The project attracted more than 140 submissions in just 40 days, from brand new concepts through to market-ready products and services. The ideas came from innovators and small businesses (SMEs) from around the UK and the world, including the US, Australia and Europe. 

Marcela Navarro, head of Customer Innovation at RBS, who is leading the Innovation Gateway project, said: "I want to congratulate the successful finalists and I look forward to seeing their products up and running in RBS. All the finalists have done a brilliant job in the RBS Innovation Gateway. We know small businesses and innovators can struggle to get the opportunity to pitch their ideas to larger corporates, which means they struggle to get the chance to prove their brilliant ideas can work. So trials and test beds like we are offering are crucial for innovators to accelerate their access to market. That's what the Gateway is about and what makes it so valuable."

The judging panel was made up of Caroline Rainbird, Director of Corporate Services of RBS, Ed Craig, Head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of ECCI, Stephen Howard, CEO of BITC, Maggie Philbin, CEO of Teen Tech and former presenter of Tomorrow's World, John Elkington - CEO Volans and Martin Chilcott, CEO 2degrees. 

Three years ago RBS set a target to reduce the banks energy and water consumption by 15% and they are currently on track to achieve this. RBS currently uses 1173 GWh of energy per year and it is initiatives such as the gateway that will help to further reduce consumption. 

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