Emerging low carbon technologies are to benefit from a new £50 million fund announced by the Government yesterday.

The cash will be allocated to British inventors that want to turn their ideas into commercial products in seven areas including energy efficient computing, energy harvesting and graphene.

Energy efficient computing include designing hardware and software to “reduce the energy needed to execute computing processes” while energy harvesting has been described as the “scavenging” of low levels of energy from environmental temperature gradients, vibration or pressure that can be used to enable miniature electronic devices to power independently.

The funding was announced as Business Secretary Vince Cable unveiled the new Emerging Technologies and Industries Strategy, which aims to identify emerging technologies – potentially “game-changing” – to create national programmes in those fields.

The other four areas it will cover include synthetic biology, non-animal technologies, emerging imaging technologies and quantum technologies.

Iain Gray, Chief Executive of Innovate UK, through which the funding will be provided, said: “With our strong and inventive research base, the UK is an excellent source of high potential early-stage technologies. This new investment will help make the push for full commercialisation, creating real economic growth for the UK in the process.”