The entrepreneurs tackling clean energy’s toughest test: Reliability

With the UN Climate Change Conference underway, hear from three Unreasonable Impact entrepreneurs strengthening the backbone of clean power.

World leaders are gathering at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) to assess progress on climate pledges, including the COP28 commitment to decarbonize energy by 2050. But behind the headlines lies a harder question: How do we keep the lights on in a world powered by clean energy? Hospitals, factories, data centers—life runs on uninterrupted electricity.

The answer increasingly depends on batteries. From utility-scale storage that stabilizes renewable-heavy grids to backup systems for data centers, batteries are becoming the backbone of a reliable, fossil-free future.

The International Energy Agency estimates global battery storage capacity must grow 14-fold to 1,200 gigawatts by 2030, while electric vehicle (EV) batteries alone could displace more than 8 million barrels of oil per day—making batteries central to nearly 20% of the emissions cuts needed this decade.

And because batteries only deliver value when the systems around them work, the reliability of the ecosystem, including charging software, standards, and field service, matters just as much to what people experience day to day.

Outside the summit halls, entrepreneurs are racing to seize this opportunity for making storage cheaper, faster, and resilient enough to keep the world running every second of the day. But they’re not doing it alone.

As Daniel Epstein, founder of Unreasonable, puts it: “Entrepreneurs solving these complex challenges need more support than traditional tech or consumer start-ups.” That is the focus of Unreasonable Impact, a partnership between Unreasonable Group and Barclays, which supports growth-stage entrepreneurs addressing global challenges with scalable, profitable solutions.

Since launching, it has supported 370-plus ventures through a program designed to help participating entrepreneurs quickly solve key challenges facing their businesses through networks, resources, and mentorship. The companies that have participated in Unreasonable Impact have raised more than $16 billion in financing and employ more than 33,000 people.

“For a decade, Barclays has partnered with Unreasonable Impact to support entrepreneurs in scaling innovative solutions to real-world challenges,” says Matt Hammerstein, CEO of the U.K. Corporate Bank and head of public policy and corporate responsibility at Barclays. “What makes this partnership so effective is our long-term, hands-on approach to helping founders go further and faster in driving change.”

Here, we take a look at three Unreasonable Impact fellows tackling the challenge of making clean power reliable.

Keeping data centers running

After decades of building companies in renewable energy and manufacturing, Tim Hysell joined ZincFive as CEO in 2016 to advance nickel-zinc rechargeable batteries and solutions.

The technology provides clean, safe, and reliable backup power for critical systems such as data centers, where even a brief outage can crash banking systems, networks, and vital services people rely on.

“Data centers have a real demand for battery backup,” says Hysell. “When utility power is disrupted, you need batteries to turn on and provide power so everything you are doing on your phone or laptop isn’t disrupted.” ZincFive’s batteries and backup solutions provide mission-critical power for around three to five minutes until grid power returns, then recharge to be ready for the next disruption. 

The architecture is designed for reliability: Every battery manufacturer strings cells together, but ZincFive’s design can safely pass current even if a cell fails, so the system keeps working. Think Christmas lights, where a single blown bulb doesn’t darken the whole strand. 

The batteries are also more than 90% recyclable, and their lifetime emissions are up to half those of lead-acid or lithium-ion.

The company is now scaling fast. Next quarter, it will launch a new battery built to handle one of the grid’s biggest new challenges—artificial intelligence’s dynamic power loads—and is also on track to reach two gigawatts of power since launch by the end of this year. “It’s showing the world we’re not a start-up—we’re a major player,” says Hysell. 

Hysell credits Unreasonable Impact for discovering ZincFive early and setting it on its path to success. It was part of the 2018 program. “From fundraising guidance to being part of a community of founders, we wouldn’t have advanced this quickly or be where we are today without Unreasonable Impact—it’s been a vital part of our journey and will continue to be moving forward.” 

Banking on zinc

Growing up “ensconced in nature” in Canada, James Larsen developed a deep respect for the environment. He always knew he wanted to work in clean tech—the question was where. After decades in the energy space, he joined Toronto-based e-Zinc in 2018 to pioneer long-duration energy storage.

The technology tackles one of the biggest barriers to reliable clean power: its intermittency. Wind and solar power are stop-start by nature, producing energy when the sun shines or wind blows, not always when demand peaks. “The number-one way to tackle this issue is through energy storage,” explains Larsen. “We need renewable energy to achieve our decarbonization goals, and therefore, we need energy storage to stabilize the supply and demand imbalances of those clean generation sources.”

Unlike lithium-ion technologies, which store only a few hours of power, e-Zinc’s proprietary zinc-based solution can store multiple days of clean energy capacity, keeping power flowing even when demand surges. “A lot of electrochemical technologies exchange ions between electrodes. What we do is store energy in physically free metal,” explains Larsen. “It’s turning electrochemistry on its head.”

E-Zinc is scaling rapidly from lab to field. The company recently commissioned a 42,000-square-foot pilot production facility in Mississauga, near Toronto, and is set to begin major commercial projects with Toyota Tsusho and the California Energy Commission in 2026.

“We’re at a very exciting inflection point for the company,” says Larsen. “We’re now coming out of the lab and into full field deployment.”

Larsen attributes e-Zinc’s rapid progress to Unreasonable Impact. “It’s been the single most important program that e-Zinc has participated in,” says Larsen. “It truly is a community, and we have benefited from connections with inspiring mentors, investors, and entrepreneurial peers that have endured in the years following the program.”

Keeping electric vehicles on the road

In 2013, Kameale Terry was working for a charging station software company when she noticed a disconnect: Drivers kept reporting broken chargers, yet the network data showed nothing was wrong. The problem wasn’t always hardware; it was software that didn’t agree. That insight led her to cofound ChargerHelp in 2020 to solve one of the biggest hurdles to EV adoption: charging reliability.

“Ninety percent of the issues that charging stations experience are software interoperability issues,” explains Terry. Charging a car might sound simple, but every step—from swiping your card to plugging in—relies on a different software.

“Sometimes, when a system—such as a charging station or its network—updates its firmware or software, the other systems don’t recognize or communicate with it, causing the station to stop working,” explains Terry. As a result, “about 30% of the industry experiences software interoperability issues at any given time, directly impacting charge success rates for drivers.”

ChargerHelp responds by sending trained technicians when problems can’t be fixed remotely. Each case feeds into a data engine that surfaces root causes, prevents repeat failures, and allows recurring issues to be solved faster—often remotely—to get chargers back up and running quickly.

Today, the company manages more than 5,600 chargers across the U.S., has raised more than $20 million, and helped bring forward California’s EV Charging Reliability Transparency Act, pushing the industry to set standards for measuring reliability. “It’s really cool to see how ChargerHelp not only does a great job from an execution perspective but is setting the standard for the industry around reliability,” says Terry.

She credits Unreasonable Impact for accelerating the company’s mission. “The network of founders that I met at Unreasonable are folks that I connect with still to this day. It’s been incredible being part of that program.”

Backing the builders of reliability

As COP leaders shape global climate goals, entrepreneurs such as Hysell, Terry, and Larsen are turning ambition into action. Their ventures tackle the real-world challenge of making clean energy reliable.

Each has moved beyond proof of concept, building businesses with commercial traction and strategic partnerships. “The transition won’t be decided by targets alone, but by the grit of entrepreneurs solving the hardest problems, day after day,” says Daniel.

Barclays provides financial services to a range of sectors, including high-emitting industries such as oil and gas. Barclays is working to reduce the emissions it finances and supports clients in the transition. For more information, visit home.barclays/climatechange.

Note: This content was created by Unreasonable Group.