First published on the Cleantech Investor website, January 2011

The Rushlight Awards 2010 were celebrated at a dinner at Church House Westminster last Thursday. Guest speaker at the event was Prof Sir John Beddington, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, who spoke about his analysis of the "Perfect Storm" which is brewing as the result of a combination of population growth and poverty alleviation. (Beddington predicts that food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources may result it public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration by 2030.) He also spoke about his dealings with Government and the challenge of climate change.

The overall Rushlight Award Winner this year was Diverse Energy. The award goes to "the most significant project, product, service, technology, innovation or initiative that has had and has the potential to have in the future the largest impact in reducing the embedded environmental footprint of current society’s activities". Diverse Energy, which was also the winner in the category for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells (the award for the most significant achievement towards the commercial development and exploitation of fuel cells or hydrogen), has created the PowerCube - an energy source for Mobile Network Operators and OEMs seeking to reduce cost and CO₂ emissions associated with power generation for off-grid telecoms towers. The full list of the winners of the various Rushlight Awards categories is set out below: 

In addition, the following entrants were commended for their entries to their relevant categories:

Surface Power
Geothermal International
EarthEnergy
ReHydrogen
B9Coal
EnerNOC
Zeropex UK Ltd
Pavegen
Lafarge Readymix
Modcell