A pioneering Cambridge CleanTech company is thriving as a result of support from global energy firm BP.

Breathing Buildings is actively looking to expand further into Europe as well as North America, either by establishing partnerships or via licensing agreements.

The BP-Breathing Buildings partnership can trace its roots back to 2000 when BP provided an endowment of £23 million to the University of Cambridge to set up a new multi-disciplinary institute to carry out research into multiphase fluid and energy flows.

This research is of vital importance to a wide range of industries and the Cambridge University based BP Institute (BPI) is today a leader in its field, spanning six inter-disciplinary departments, with a wide variety of research projects taking place at any one time.

David Eyton, group head of technology at BP said: “For BP, the benefits of our relationship with the BPI are clear: the ability to access scientific reasoning and ideas and apply these to existing and potential business challenges. By inviting BP to look at problems in a different way, the BPI opens up solutions that would not otherwise be possible.”

In November 1999, following an initiative announced by Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, BP contributed £2.5 million to a joint venture involving two of the world’s greatest universities, the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The idea behind the Cambridge-MIT Institute initiative, for which the Government provided £65.1 million of funding over a five-year period, was to undertake joint education and research initiatives which would enhance entrepreneurship, productivity and competitiveness by improving the exchange of knowledge between universities and industry.

Various research groups applied for the funding from BP but it was a low energy building research project which secured the investment. The work was carried out at the Building Technology Group in MIT and the Department of Architecture and the BPI at Cambridge.

The research activities included monitoring of buildings, occupancy surveys, mathematical modelling, and laboratory modelling of ventilation using both air-flow experiments as well as smaller scale water-bath ones.

The research programme resulted in the discovery of the patented e-stack concept, which uses the principles of natural mixing ventilation in winter and natural upward displacement ventilation in the summer.

The benefit of using a different strategy for winter is that the heating energy bills typically associated with conventional natural ventilation can be drastically reduced. BP was keen to ensure that the concept was turned into reality in order to reduce energy use in the built environment.

BP therefore supported the formation of Breathing Buildings which was launched in 2006 (originally under the name E-Stack) to develop and market technology based on this new ventilation concept.

During 2006 and 2007 prototypes of the e-stack system were constructed and tested in the Breathing Buildings’ laboratories, with a team of highly qualified ventilation experts. Since then, the value and potential of the innovation has been recognised by several awards for innovation.

Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, managing director of Breathing Buildings said: “The award-winning e-stack low energy ventilation system has significant energy saving and environmental benefits and thanks to its success, Breathing Buildings is now a market leader in its field and a multi-million pound business.

“However, without the collaboration and input from BP as well as MIT, and the University of Cambridge, Breathing Buildings would not exist.”

BP has continued to support Breathing Buildings and was pivotal in assisting in the most recent equity fundraising which resulted in both BP and London-based MMC Ventures contributing growth capital. Also, Dr Bob Sorrell, BP’s vice-president for public partnerships, recently joined the board of Breathing Buildings.

The company continues to further the knowledge of natural ventilation, pushing the boundaries of energy saving potential in a wide range of building types. It is currently supervising a fourth year engineering student from the University of Cambridge to examine natural ventilation in large shopping malls.

E-stack systems already operate in over 60 different buildings and there is a substantial number of projects in the pipeline for which the company is actively engaged in supplying systems as well as its highly regarded consultancy.

Breathing Buildings is extremely active in a range of sectors such as education, healthcare, leisure and retail, working with retail developer Hammerson as well as major high street retailers Asda, M&S and Tesco.

Dr Fitzgerald said: “The interaction with the University of Cambridge helps us to develop insight regarding ventilation and energy reduction in buildings. Exposure to extremely bright students and academics invariably leads to new concepts.”

Breathing Buildings plays a pivotal role in ‘green’ building, through reducing and optimising energy usage in heating and ventilating. The company’s unique e-stack ventilation system provides low energy ventilation, using the principles of natural mixing ventilation in winter and natural upward displacement ventilation in the summer.

BP is one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies servicing customers every day in more than 90 countries across six continents. BP’s activities are exploration and production; refining and marketing; and Alternative Energy, its low carbon energy business.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Dr Shaun Fitzgerald