Technology thesis · Clean Energy
medium conviction emergingEnergy harvesting
Energy harvesting has converged on Ambient IoT - batteryless devices powered by light or RF - as the only category at commercial scale to 2030, validated by the February 2025 Ambient IoT Alliance.
Position maintained continuously · last reviewed Jun 24, 2026
The thesis
Ambient IoT Alliance and 3GPP Release 19 unblock the ecosystem
Two coordinated structural events shifted the energy-harvesting category from individual-company point solutions toward an ecosystem. First, the Ambient IoT Alliance (AIoTA) formed in February 2025 as a global cross-industry coalition - founding members include Atmosic, Infineon, Intel, PepsiCo, Qualcomm, VusionGroup, and Wiliot - explicitly to develop interoperability standards for batteryless IoT devices relying on energy harvesting. Second, 3GPP Release 19 - finalised in September 2025 with RAN4 performance work completing March 2026 - introduced support for ambient IoT in cellular networks, extending standards coverage from the device-side electronics into the network-side communications layer. Combined, these moves create the standards baseline that enterprise customers (retail, smart-building, industrial, supply-chain) need before committing to large multi-vendor deployments. ABI Research projects 1.1B Ambient IoT device shipments by 2030, anchored on this ecosystem standardisation - without common standards the category was structurally stuck below 100M units.
Indoor PV is the volume winner; RF and kinetic carve out specific niches
The four energy-harvesting modalities have differentiated into use-case niches. Indoor PV (Exeger, Epishine, GCell Solar) wins on volume - projected at 57% of 2030 Ambient IoT device shipments - because indoor lighting provides reliable predictable energy across the broadest range of indoor environments (retail, smart-building, asset tags). RF energy harvesting (Wiliot, Atmosic, Powercast, Ossia, Energous) takes a projected 36% share - particularly for very-low-duty-cycle tags (smart-tag identifiers, occupancy sensors) where intermittent RF excitation is sufficient. Kinetic / piezoelectric (EnOcean, Mide Technology, MicroGen) holds roughly 4% share, anchored in switch and door-actuator applications; EnOcean is an independent former Siemens spin-off, not a Siemens subsidiary. Thermoelectric (Matrix Industries, Marlow, Coherent thermoelectric group) holds about 3% - industrial and body-worn applications where temperature differentials are naturally present. PMIC vendors (ePeas, Nexperia) sit horizontally across all four modalities.
State of the art (2026)
Energy harvesting has stopped being a generic research field and become Ambient IoT - batteryless devices powered by light, RF, motion or heat. The Ambient IoT Alliance (founded February 2025; Atmosic, Infineon, Intel, PepsiCo, Qualcomm, VusionGroup, Wiliot) plus 3GPP Release 19, finalised September 2025, gave the category its first cross-vendor and cellular standards baseline. Indoor photovoltaic dominates volume and RF follows; ABI Research projects 1.1B annual Ambient IoT shipments by 2030. Wiliot is the RF reference deployment - Walmart is scaling toward roughly 90 million battery-free IoT Pixels by end-2026, and Royal Mail ordered 850,000 tags for roll-cage tracking. Retail ESLs (VusionGroup, Hanshow) and EU building-sensor compliance are the near-term demand pull; the open question is whether harvested-power unit economics beat coin cells outside these anchor cases.
Smart-building and retail ESL applications drive near-term volume
Two near-term application clusters drive the volume curve through 2026-2028. Smart-building sensors: the EU Energy Efficiency Directive recast includes building sensor requirements that will require approximately 100 million wireless building sensors across the EU by 2030 (HVAC zone controllers, occupancy detection, indoor-air-quality monitoring). Energy-harvested sensors avoid the operational cost of millions of battery changes. Retail electronic shelf labels (ESL): VusionGroup, Hanshow, SES-imagotag, and others now ship hundreds of millions of ESLs per year, with the next-generation moving from battery-powered to RF or indoor-PV harvested - Wiliot's RF tags and VusionGroup's hybrid battery-RF tags are the lead products. Supply-chain ambient IoT trackers (PepsiCo a founding AIoTA member is the highest-profile enterprise customer) are the third near-term volume application.
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Signal stack
Evidence stacked leading → lagging
Technology-native KPIs
Metrics that predict trajectory, tracked over time
Landscape map
Who builds what — and who depends on whom
Catalyst calendar
Dated events that will move the position
Technology roadmap
Milestones on the path to maturity
Watchlists
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Decision frameworks
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Thesis changelog
When our view changed, and why
Change our mind
6 disconfirming conditions
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