Blue Earth Summit

As a former postdoc researcher at the University of Manchester, Somayeh Taheri discovered that many people couldn’t afford to heat their homes due to a broken cycle in the energy market. She was analysing climate change and fuel poverty data in her research at the School of Environment, Education and Development.

As a former postdoc researcher at the University of Manchester, Somayeh Taheri discovered that many people couldn’t afford to heat their homes due to a broken cycle in the energy market. She was analysing climate change and fuel poverty data in her research at the School of Environment, Education and Development. Unwilling to turn a blind eye, Somayeh 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.

UrbanChain was founded in 2017 as the UK's first provider of peer-to-peer energy exchange services and went on to win the first 30 competitions it entered, driving non-traditional investment into the CleanTech company. To date UrbanChain has received £7.35 million in funding, including from a Series A fundraise led by global investment firm Eurazeo as well as receiving funding awards from Innovate UK and the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero. Somayeh Taheri has regularly been labelled as an individual who is 'pioneering new ways of addressing the climate crisis'