These eleven organisations are building a greener Europe

Google, in partnership with EIT Climate-KIC, launched the €10 million Google.org Impact Challenge (GIC) on Climate to fund bold ideas that aim to use technology to accelerate Europe’s progress toward a greener, more resilient future. 11 initiatives have now been selected to receive funding.

The recipient solutions address a range of areas in need of decarbonisation and climate adaptation, such as in consumer behaviour, urban infrastructure, agriculture, water, energy, packaging, finance, weather forecasting and land.

“The response of our EIT Climate-KIC and Google.org communities to the Impact Challenge on Climate has been truly inspiring–quantitatively and qualitatively. The successful applicants are a source of hope and inspiration for all who believe in the power of human ingenuity and tenacity to transform ourselves and to contribute to just and inclusive Green Recovery,” said Kirsten Dunlop, CEO, EIT Climate-KIC. “I am furthermore delighted to see a set of possible synergies emerging among this solutions, indicating possibilities for systemic effects.” 

“We’re proud to have partnered with EIT Climate-KIC for the Google.org Impact Challenge on Climate,” said Rowan Barnett, Head of Google.org in EMEA and APAC. “Their deep network of expertise around innovation in the space of climate and sustainability was vital in helping to select this strong cohort of organisations. We look forward to working with them moving forward to provide the highest level of catalytic support to our Challenge grantees.”

Meet the recipients

• CEiiA in Portugal aims to reward people for not emitting carbon. They’re building a blockchain-based sustainability platform with green digital credits that users can exchange for goods and other incentives.
• The German non-profit Climate Farmers is developing soil carbon monitoring systems to help Europe’s farmers transition to regenerative agriculture. 
• Dark Matter Laboratories, based in the Netherlands and UK, is creating a financial platform (that is open, verifiable and outcomes-based) to support public investments in urban tree restoration
• Deltares in the Netherlands, in partnership with the World Resources Institute and the World Wildlife Fund, is working to democratise information on water resources. They’re developing an app with water resources indicators.
• The Energy Web Foundation in Switzerland is working to accelerate a low-carbon electricity system through open-source technologies that connect customers with energy markets.
• Materiom, based in the UK, is helping share the building blocks of high-performing, low-carb compostables with an open-source library of bioplastic recipes. 
• Sweden-based Meta Mind AB, in collaboration with the United Nations and the Exponential Roadmap Initiative, helping the worlds companies automatically compile a carbon report by analysing bank transactions, making climate mitigation easy and actionable.
• Open Climate Fix in the UK will use machine learning and satellite data to improve the forecasting of solar electricity—supporting the greening of electricity supplies. 
• In France, Open Food Facts is working to link individual food scores to barcodes so that consumers and producers can see the environmental footprint of millions of food products and make choices to reduce their own impact. 
• In collaboration with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Saildrone are using drones, which will quantify Gulf-Stream data, in real-time, to improve weather and global carbon predictions. 
• The Arctic north stores as much carbon as Amazonia. Keeping it there is essential. The Snowchange Cooperative, based in Finland, is using technology and knowledge of indigenous communities to rewild this habitat.

What’s ahead

Starting this week, the funding recipients of the GIC on Climate will receive mentoring and workshops from Google and external experts on topics like technology, growth, product, design, people and more. 

You can learn more about these organisations in a new podcast series called Planet Progress. In each 25-minute episode, the host, mathematician and broadcaster Dr Hannah Fry, talks to organisations about their big ideas and the challenges they’re attempting to solve.