Climate KIC’s new Greece Hub opens for business

Greek foreign affairs minister George Katrougalos welcomed Climate KIC’s new Greece Hub today at an official launch event attended by key local and EU representatives from across the innovation community. The hub is part of a new European innovation strategy to boost national and cross-border collaboration.

The new Climate KIC hub in Athens is one of three new hubs selected earlier this year. Along with new Climate KIC hubs in Croatia and Lithuania, the hub in Greece forms part of the EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS).

The new hubs are designed to boost the climate innovation engagement by European regions not formally within Climate KIC’s geographic network and are selected following a highly competitive process. The RIS scheme is focused on countries and regions regarded as ‘modest and moderate’ according to the European Innovation Scoreboard.

Since 2016, Climate KIC has established innovation hubs in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia.

Greek start-ups

The launch event also included a discussion with Greek startups about their experience so far in working with Climate KIC to get their climate innovations to market.

Other key topics included the Athens edition of Climate KIC’s Climathon event which is set to take place in cities around the world on 26 October 2018.

New partners

The newly established Climate KIC Greece Hub is composed by a consortium of various organisations across the knowledge triangle: the partners Athena Research and Innovation Center (ATHENA RC) Academy of Athens (AA) – Research Centre for Atmospheric Physics and Climatology, European Regional Framework for Co-operation (ERFC) Uni.Fund, supported by the associate Partners: United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN SDSN-Greece, hosted by ICRE8: International Center for Research on the Economy and the Environment) Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE) Eunice Energy Group.