As a Climate-KIC Pioneer into Practice (PiP) I had an opportunity to participate at the Pioneers International Workshop that was organized in Amsterdam, Netherlands on the 13th of November and to attend Global Grand Final of the Climate Launchpad that was organized on 14th and 15th of November in the same city. The theme of the workshop was about moving from individual to collective and in the afternoon, we worked on system mapping the Maritime Deep Demo, for more sustainable worldwide shipping. Workshop was also an occasion to meet other Pioneers from this and previous years and to exchange our experiences.
After the workshop, we had an opportunity to attend two days event of Grand Finale of The Climate Launchpad. The Climate Launchpad is the world’s largest green business ideas competition. Its mission is to unlock the world’s clean tech potential that addresses climate change and the competition creates a stage for those ideas. Climate Launchpad is part of the Entrepreneurship offerings of EIT Climate-KIC.
During the Grand finale of the Climate Launchpad global green startups pitches, interesting keynotes and interactive master classes were on the program.
On the First day, Marjan Minnesma, founder & director of Urgenda, the organization that won the historic climate lawsuit against the Dutch government, did the opening keynote. Between the semifinals pitching of the projects there were interesting Keynotes and Expert sessions, such as; “Climate change and startups: how do we fund innovation for startups fixing climate change?” and “Female Founders, how to get more gender diversity in the climate fight?“
Second day has started with Panel Discussion “Building start-up ecosystems and fixing climate change around the globe“. It continued with semifinals pitching and expert sessions and keynotes such as “A Global Journey – Air pollution, health and climate” Keynote by Beth Gardiner (author of ‘Choked; The Age of Air Pollution and the Fight for a Cleaner Future’), and “The importance of green entrepreneurship for finding solutions regarding climate change” by Focco Vijselaar, Director-General Enterprise and Innovation at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.
The last part of the Day 2 was finals of the Global Grand Final, were the final finalist of the competition pitched their ideas to the jury and interesting publics.
The Global winner was Leafy Ke -Clean fuel for a better home from Kenya. Their pitch was about converting used diapers to make a fuel to be used at homes. They sell this fuel to informal settlements at a price of 1.03£ per litre. They collect diapers and process them using advanced techniques to make the fuel gel. This fuel burns cleanly with no carbon monoxide thus eliminating death by poisoning cases at homes and very low CO2 emissions thus mitigating climate change.
2nd place won MACLEC technical project laboratory pvt ltd from India for the pitch about Harnessing hydro power from surface velocity of slow moving streams.
3rd place won Enerdrape from Switzerland for Modular geo-thermal panels that efficiently captures heat in existing indoor environments located in the underground and transfers it for renewable heating and cooling to buildings. This solution is an alternative source of heating and cooling to existing buildings and facilitate access to renewable thermal energy for their energy transition.
There were also Theme award winners for different themes; such as Emerging markets or Green City Solution.
It was an interesting experience to hear many innovative and ecological ideas and to meet people from different fields.