Satellite Vu has raised £3.6 million to launch a satellite infrastructure it claims will be capable of imaging the thermal footprint of any building on the planet multiple times a day.

The funding round was led by London-based SpaceTech investment firm Seraphim Capital.

Satellite Vu said its infrastructure of miniaturised satellites will use high resolution infrared cameras to collect temperature data about both the natural and built environment during the day and night.

The start-up said this would enable monitoring: energy waste by poorly insulated buildings, how many shifts a factory is operating, and how much energy a given power station is generating.

Satellite Vu said the temperature data it collects can pinpoint the worst energy wasting buildings so that investment in energy efficiency measures can be deployed based on measurement data.

The UK government invested £1.4 million in Satellite VU in December 2020, as part of a wider £500 million investment in space related projects.

The news comes after the UK government axed its £1.5 billion green homes grant scheme in March, which offered grants of up to £5,000 or £10,000 for insulation or low carbon heating.

“This ground-breaking and timely technology will, for the first time, allow the government and the public to make better and informed decisions on which buildings are a priority to upgrade,” said Anthony Baker chief executive of Satellite Vu. “The lessons learnt from the pandemic were: test, test, test; in the climate change challenge we need to: measure, measure, measure.”

He added: “Satellite Vu’s technology is the best satellite system, by far, to measure the temperature of buildings, globally, consistently and recurrently with multiple revisits per day.”

James Bruegger, managing partner of Seraphim Capital, said: “We believe that high resolution infrared satellite data holds enormous promise for positively impacting the world.”

He added: “A combination of poor resolution, high cost and infrequency of data capture has held back the application of this high impact dataset for decades.”

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