Sparks of 2026: #16 - Biaco An Alternative to Heat Pumps
🔥 Sparks of 2026
Biaco Energy – the boiler that wants to break the rules
Some Sparks are about polish. This one is about audacity.
Biaco Energy is not launching a finished, mass-market product in 2026. It is doing something more interesting. It is moving from prototype into real-world commercial testing.
We were already excited about this team of scientist inventors when we met the at FutureBuild in March 2025. What are they doing?
Biaco is developing a zero-carbon boiler built around an unconventional idea. Instead of combustion or low-temperature heat extraction, it uses an electrically driven energy cell that claims to generate high-grade heat through a controlled plasma and exothermic reaction inside water.
Biaco Energy
If it works at scale, it would sit in a space that currently does not exist. Hotter than a heat pump. More flexible than resistive electric. Designed to slot into existing heating systems rather than redesign them.
That is a big “if”. But Sparks is not a winners list. It is a watch list.
The testing cell.
Why Biaco makes the list
- It's a UK-based clean heat startup tackling boiler replacement head on
- Claims high-temperature output suitable for existing radiator systems
- Aims to reduce electrical input relative to direct electric heating
- Entering prototype and early commercial testing during 2026
This is the moment when ideas stop being PowerPoint and start meeting plumbers, buildings, controls, warranties and insurers. Many technologies fail here. A few survive. Almost none get watched closely enough while it is happening.
Biaco Where Winners In The Innovation Awards At FutureBuild
What we are watching in 2026
- Independent verification of performance and efficiency
- Reliability over time, not just lab conditions
- How installers experience the system
- Where it sits on running cost compared to heat pumps and direct electric
- Whether the physics stands up under boring, everyday use
Biaco is not claiming to have solved everything yet. That honesty is part of why it belongs on the list.
If 2026 is the year the boiler starts to be questioned properly, Biaco is one of the companies doing the questioning from the inside.
This one is a Spark because if it works, it changes the conversation.
And if it does not, we still learn something important.
We will be watching.