Carbon Delta Announced as Europe’s Best Climate Venture of 2016

10 November 2016: Climate-KIC announced this week that Carbon Delta, a start-up from Zurich, Switzerland is the winner of the European finals of the Venture Competition 2016, held in Frankfurt, Germany.

Carbon Delta was awarded the title of Europe’s best climate venture and €80,000 to help grow their climate venture. The startup identifies and analyzes the climate change resilience of publicly traded companies. They have developed a proprietary evaluation system that helps investors assess climate risks in their portfolios, allowing them to identify how much a company’s value is possibly affected by climate change.

The Venture Competition, hosted by Climate-KIC, brings together the 15 most successful start-ups within the Climate-KIC Accelerator. The Climate-KIC Accelerator programme identifies, funds and nurtures cleantech entrepreneurs from across Europe with transformational business ideas to successfully manage the issue of climate change.  The Venture Competition takes place over nine country heats, in which the most promising start-ups are filtered out from countries across Europe.  The 15 finalists are selected based upon their potential to become successful commercial entities capable of mitigating or adapting to climate change. 

The winners of the Climate-KIC Venture Competition European Final 2016 are:

• First prize: Carbon Delta
• Runner up: SiOx

Runner up SiOX, a Danish startup, have developed a technology that has made glass-on-metal flexible coating possible, effectively protecting metal from corrosion and fouling. SiOx’s NANOmel silica coating reduces fouling and corrosion by more than 50 per cent, without reducing the thermal efficiency of the heat exchanger.

Oliver Marchand, CEO and Co-Founder of Carbon Delta said: “The coaches at Climate-KIC have been instrumental in supporting our journey and challenging us every step of the way to keep pushing us forward. Winning this prize will enable us to grow our team and take our business to the next level.”

During the European finals, the participants pitched to a renowned panel of judges on the real-world criteria of their innovations including feasibility, scalability, job creation and climate impact. The judging panel included, Murray McCaig, Dr. Alois Martin Flatz, and Robert Schrimpff. 

Murray McCaig, founder and managing partner with ArcTern Ventures and a member of the judging panel, on why Carbon Delta was selected as the winner: “They had the potential to accelerate the shift of trillions of capital from high to low carbon intensive businesses.”

Working on solutions for COP22

The Venture Competition is part of Climate-KIC’s Journey to COP22, with these start-ups from Climate-KIC’s Accelerator providing proof that there are many profitable possibilities for building a zero carbon economy and climate resilient society.

The next generation of cleantech start-ups is giving a clear message to the COP22 negotiations in Marrakech: that we can transition to a zero-carbon economy by 2050, provided that the big ideas coming out of start-ups are supported. Cleantech is the single biggest business opportunity of the 21^st century.  

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ENDS

Press Notes:

For further information about the Venture Competition and the (semi-)finalists, visit the dedicated page on the Climate-KIC website: https://www.climate-kic.org/best-climate-venture-2016/

For more information please contact:

Lyle Copeland

Edelman for Climate-KIC

Lyle.copeland@edelman.com

+44 (0)203 047 4028

About Climate-KIC

Climate-KIC is the EU’s main climate innovation initiative. It is the world’s largest public-private innovation partnership focused on mitigating and adapting to climate change.  Climate-KIC’s tested framework and resources mitigate the risk of innovation, bringing credibility to game-changing ideas, and accelerating their deployment, scaling and mainstream use through collaboration.  Climate-KIC consists of companies, academic institutions and the public sector. 

The organisation has its headquarters in London, UK, and leverages national and regional centres across Europe to educate students and professionals, to support start-up companies and to bring together partners on innovation projects to bring about a connected, creative transformation of knowledge and ideas into products and services that help mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Climate-KIC is supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union. https://www.climate-kic.org/