Meet the woman leading a green energy revolution – TechBlast

Somayeh Taheri is on a mission to make green energy affordable for all. Her Entech company UrbanChain is now undergoing a Series A fundraise.

“If it’s broken, find a way to fix it.”

For Somayeh Taheri, a former postdoc researcher at the University of Manchester, this became alarmingly apparent when analysing climate change and fuel poverty data in her research at the School of Environment, Education and Development.

On discovering that many people couldn’t afford to heat their homes due to a broken cycle in the energy market, Taheri was unwilling to turn a blind eye and set about solving the issue.

She began to see artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain as pathways that could shift the use of renewables into the mainstream of a fragmented UK energy market. Months later in 2017 UrbanChain was born.

The company is now undergoing a Series A fundraising process and will soon move its staff from the Greenheys building to the £21m, 91,000 sq ft Base at Manchester Science Park.

Taheri tells TechBlast: “In UrbanChain’s first two years we entered 30 competitions and won them all which was a non-traditional way of fundraising for an early stage business.

“With growth since and ambitions to expand overseas we are in dialogue with a variety of investors and are excited about taking the next steps in our journey.”

Towards the end of last year UrbanChain welcomed Together Housing Association to its P2P alternative energy market.

Two hotels were also onboarded in 2021, joining a long list of corporate consumers to have already made the switch.

UrbanChain’s P2P green energy exchange model enables consumers to place an exact order for electricity and for generators to meet that order.

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