Centrica launches new Innovations venture

The establishment of CI will bolster the company’s customer-focused strategy and strengthen its ability to identify and invest in the technologies and innovative ideas that can deliver new products, offers and services for customers.

CI will be complementary to and support existing businesses within Centrica, including those such as energy supply, services, Connected Home, Distributed Energy & Power and the Digital Technology team. We will look to invest up to £100 million over the next five years in start-ups giving us access to technology and entrepreneurial capability and resources. This builds on what we have already achieved through Ignite, our existing £10m social entrepreneurship fund, which began funding enterprises in 2014, and will now sit within CI. CI will be led by Charles Cameron, Centrica’s Group Director of Technology and Engineering.

Centrica Innovations will focus on:

• Placing scouts in key technology hubs – Seattle, Houston, London, Cambridge, Tel Aviv;
• Delivering a new venture fund to invest in start-ups;
• Incubating and accelerating in-house and external innovations;
• Embedding an innovative culture across Centrica.

CI will also support existing in-house ventures, such as Io-Tahoe™, a data lake software and services company that allows organisation and management of data from multiple structured and unstructured databases to help unlock insights from British Gas’ 14 million energy customer accounts, accelerating development by providing tools and methodologies to support rapid growth. It will also act as an ‘incubator’ for external ventures which are not yet at a maturity level for investment and require different types of support, for example business expertise, mentoring or product piloting.

Iain Conn, Group Chief Executive, Centrica said:

"The launch of Centrica Innovations is an important step in identifying and responding to the changing needs of our customers. The new venture will ensure innovation is embedded across our business and will allow us to invest in the technologies that can support our customers into the future. We are already investing £1.2bn to 2020 in our Connected Home and Distributed Energy and Power businesses, helping residential and business customers to take control of their energy and save money.

“As the UK’s leading energy supplier, we have a proven track record in harnessing new technologies for the benefit of our customers. As the Government launches an Industrial Strategy with technology and R&D at its heart, Centrica is focused on delivering a smarter energy future for the UK.”

More information can be found at www.centrica.com.

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Notes To Editors:

• Centrica plc is an international energy and services company. Everything we do is focused on satisfying the changing needs of our customers.
• We supply energy and energy-related services to around 28 million customer accounts in the UK, Ireland and North America, through strong brands such as British Gas and Bord Gáis Energy supported by around 12,000 engineers and technicians.
• We are also developing new and innovative products and services for customers globally. Our Connected Home business has developed products such as the Hive smart thermostat and through our Distributed Energy & Power business we offer integrated energy solutions for commercial and industrial customers, including flexible generation, energy management systems, and battery storage.
• We also have an Energy Marketing & Trading business which manages commodity risk and provides wholesale market access for the Group, as well as offering route to market services for third parties and undertaking optimisation and trading activity.
• Centrica continues to be active in gas and oil Exploration & Production, focusing on the UK, Netherlands and Norway and targeting production of between 40-50mmboe per annum. In Central Power Generation, we own five gas-fired power stations in the UK and a 20% interest in EDF Energy’s UK nuclear fleet.
• We also own the UK’s largest gas storage facility, Rough.