Regional Innovation Scheme start-ups showcase cleantech achievements supported by EIT Climate-KIC
In The News
20 Nov 2018
Last month (October 2018) in Vienna, Austria, 32 start-ups from across central, southern and eastern Europe came together to share their cleantech innovations and learn how to accelerate them into commercial success for positive climate impact.
Opening the EIT Climate-KIC RIS (Regional Innovation Scheme) Demo Day and Bootcamp; Bernd Winters, Head of Start-up Programme at Provadis Hochschule; Emilie Normann, Director of Entrepreneurship at EIT Climate-KIC and Mike Cherrett, Director of European Affairs, also at EIT Climate-KIC, explained the support their organisations offer to entrepreneurs leading the way in their countries, from coaching, to networking and funding opportunities.
Ivar Kruusenberg, Chief Executive Officer of PowerUp, a start-up in the RIS Accelerator said: “It’s great to be here at the RIS Bootcamp. Our product line – the PowerUp fuel cell generators – are a zero greenhouse gas emission technology which provides a powerful, reliable and highly efficient backup electricity generation solution to users, particularly for sailing boats, mobile homes and campers.
“We’re in the EIT RIS Accelerator, Stage 1. This has been super useful for our start-up, for example, today we met with another start-up in the Accelerator – WooBox – who we want to explore working with to potentially use their sustainable shipping box solution to ship our generators.”
Nikica Marinkovic, Co-founder of WooBox which is another RIS supported start-up, added: “Support from EIT Climate-KIC as a named supporter through the RIS Accelerator programme gave us an important credibility boost. We’re now going global with our brand with an expanding network of supporters.”
The EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS) is a dedicated programme to accelerate climate innovation across Europe. It facilitates connections into our established innovation hubs, in 12 countries in the centre, east and south of Europe, securing EIT Climate-KIC’s pan-European reach, boosting climate innovation capacity across the continent.
Southern and eastern Europe face some of the most acute climate adaptation risks and projected economic and societal costs of climate change. EIT RIS eligible countries also encompass some of Europe’s largest greenhouse gas emitters in the industrial and manufacturing context and through poor energy transition.
Lucian Corduneanu said: “Our start-up, SensiX, develops Internet of Things devices which track ambient parameters like temperature and evaluates the energy efficiency of indoor environments. We work with companies to reduce the amount of energy they need to create comfortable workplaces, thus reducing the climate impact.
“Early support from the EIT RIS Accelerator was pivotal in getting us to a position where we’re right on the edge of scaling and becoming customer ready. The support has meant we’ve been able to hire two staff and run three pilot projects.” SensiX is soon launching their new website at sensix.io.
Galin Bonev, Chief Executive Officer of Eljoy Bikes, said: “EIT Climate-KIC’s local partner Cleantech Bulgaria gave us the connections we needed to launch our first pilot project in Sofia, Bulgaria after we won Climate-KIC’s Urban Challenge competition in 2017. The pilot involves 10 electric bikes with permanent docking stations aimed at tourists going up into the mountains around Sofia.
“We are now looking at a second pilot in Sofia city centre with our e-bikes.”
EIT Climate-KIC’s Urban Challenges programme helps city partners to define the challenges they face, for entrepreneurs to respond to these challenges at a competitive open innovation pitch event, and for solutions to be tested and implemented to meet real-world needs. You can read more here.
The EIT RIS aims to stimulate low carbon innovation in countries, regions and cities across Europe and significantly boost local capacity to implement the highest impact ideas, while reinforcing synergies and complementarities with EU, national, regional innovation initiatives and funding sources. It is a strategic instrument to target climate mitigation needs and challenges.
The next application phase for the RIS Accelerator closes in January 2019. You can find full information about how to apply here.
