A leading technology company needs to constantly invent new ways to deliver value. There are cutting-edge technologies that change the way an industry works, as we have seen with SpaceX, OpenAI and Claude today; Pfizer and Moderna with their vaccines five years ago; Amazon Web Services and the iPhone from the generation before that.

A lot of this R&D takes years, sometimes decades, but it changes the industry so fundamentally that we never go back to the old way of doing things. While these are celebrated & publicised, at the core, we have to stay humble. No innovation is too small to matter.

A minor tweak that yields a small improvement in membrane efficiency, or a smarter feeding system, or a simple fix to how field crews log faults can compound over time into real gains in output, cost and reliability, which are often faster and cheaper than chasing the next big breakthrough. Incremental ideas build the culture and confidence needed to attempt bigger architectural or disruptive leaps later.

The innovation matrix

This is why we put together a way to divide our limited time and resources: an Innovation Matrix (pic above). A leading renewable energy company should balance these deliberately:

• Incremental gains (efficiency, cost, reliability) to fund today’s business
  • Architectural bets to defend market position
  • New byproducts from digestate
  • New products such as our own in-house enzymes that can enable the entire CBG
• Disruptive plays to open new and small segments
  • SAF and marine fuels
• High-risk radical bets for long-term breakthroughs
  • Genetic modification of bacteria to produce more biogas
  • Our own catalyst for SAF production

On the incremental front, we are testing 15–20 different bio-boosters in our lab. Today, we operate 25 digesters in our new R&D lab. If you have new ideas that you would like to recommend to improve the gas yield or to improve the slurry dynamics, please reach out. We will be happy to trial your ideas.

Patents GPS currently holds:

On the Radical / Disruptive Front

The SAF centrepiece is our partnership with CSIR-NCL around a patented catalyst that can turn ethanol into jet-range hydrocarbons through a process called oligomerisation.

This is IP creation. GPS holds exclusive commercial rights to that catalyst.

We are figuring out how to genetically modify the bacteria to boost our biogas pathways. We are exploring whether there are viruses that can be used to program bacteria.

If we get this going, we will have created what exists only in science fiction.

Panoramic shots of our labs in the R&D Facility