Innovation
Raft Energy: A battery powered by love
- Innovation
- Article
- 3 minutes read
Benjamin Pluke and his wife had a dispute: she liked the heating on and the windows open. Instead of settling for higher energy bills, Pluke built a biogas company from his shed using household and chicken waste. His training as an osteopath helped him to solve problems that plague industrial digesters. Today RAFT Energy operates at an industrial scale. Unconventional founders need unconventional support to keep building the future.
- A soaring energy bill and love for his wife sent founder Ben Pluke from osteopathy to his garden shed and a radically different approach to energy.
- By focusing on biology rather than traditional engineering, RAFT Energy developed technology that helps biogas operators improve performance and unlock more value from waste streams.
- Today RAFT sees biogas as a giant green battery, turning food waste and agricultural by-products into cleaner, more resilient energy systems at scale.
- Scaling unconventional ideas needs unconventional support. HSBC Innovation Banking helps founders like RAFT extend runway, manage cashflow and maintain the liquidity to build the future.
Benjamin Pluke and his wife love each other, but were locked in a domestic standoff. Her Polish habit meant that the heating was cranked up, the windows were open, and the energy bill was climbing fast. For most couples, that’s where things could end. For Pluke, it was the beginning of something extraordinary.
An osteopath by training, Pluke is not your typical cleantech founder. His domestic dispute pushed him to rethink energy entirely, setting him on a path that would lead to chicken manure, kitchen scraps and, eventually, a breakthrough in biogas.
It was Pluke’s lack of conventional training that gave him the edge, leading him to focus on the living biology rather than just engineering like others in the sector. His novel approach helped solve some of the complex problems plaguing his digester and the giant industrial ones, including instability, volatile fatty acid build-up and inconsistent pH.
What started as a humble plan to go off-grid, tinkering in a garden shed, quickly evolved. His micro-anaerobic digester, fuelled by waste from the kitchen and garden, became something far more ambitious. With co-founders Karl Ahmed and Alex van Klaveren RAFT Energy has grown into a business helping operators produce more renewable natural gas, detect issues earlier and unlock greater value from waste streams.
Today RAFT Energy sees biogas as a big green battery: reducing reliance on fossil fuels, easing pressure on national grids and creating value from food waste, manure and agricultural by-products. With European expansion underway, what started with chicken manure, kitchen scraps and an eye-watering heating bill is becoming a blueprint for a cleaner, more resilient energy system.
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