KIC-starting the climate challenge
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) was set up in 2008 as an independent body of the EU to tap into the continent’s knowledge and innovation ecosystem. This has resulted in the development of three Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) focusing on climate change, energy and ICT. The EIT will see a major increase in its budget under Horizon 2020 and there are plans for the development of six new KICs between 2014 and 2018. Each KIC is a separate legal entity, allowing each ecosystem to generate its own revenue and reinvest the finances generated in KIC activities.
The Climate-KIC focuses on tackling the effects of climate change, composed of 162 partners, made up 50% businesses (an equal split between large corporations and SMEs), academic institutions (30%) and public bodies (20%). Mary Ritter is the chief executive of Climate-KIC and began by explaining the role of the community.
Our goal is to be the engine for climate change innovation in Europe and have an impact on the world stage. Our major role is to provide the people, the products and services, and to help develop the policy for addressing and adapting to global warming, as well as its mitigation, which is now crucial. People join us for a long-term vision and we are a closely organised network with national co-location centres across Europe. These are innovation clusters where top universities, big businesses and SMEs collaborate and where innovation really begins. The centres give us the focus and locale where it all takes place, which is why we are so different from a standard network where everyone is very loosely linked. We have five centres – Paris in France; Berlin in Germany; Zurich in Switzerland; London in the UK and Randstad in the Netherlands.
Climate-KIC is unique amongst the three KICs as it also has six Regional Implementation and Innovation Communities across Europe – these are Valencia in Spain, Emilia Romagna in Italy, Lower Silesia in Poland, Hessen in Germany, the West Midlands in the UK and Central Hungary. They serve as the eyes and ears of society – they identify the societal challenges and function as test beds where we can implement and scale-up innovation. Each region is a cluster of partners that is led by a regional or city government.
Each of the centres and regions develop a local ecosystem with local partners, so everyone has a focus locally and across the KIC community. The regions have a very different emphasis from the centres but are strongly complementary and give us reach right across Europe, helping expand our influence and share our innovation across the continent.
We deliver our results through a pipeline integrating three ‘pillars’ – ‘innovation’, which focuses on providing support to close-to-market projects; ‘entrepreneurship’ which provides a range of support and business coaching for start-ups and SMEs; and ‘education’, where we take post-graduate students and put them through high-quality academic training integrated with ‘learning by doing’ for the development of entrepreneurship skills. We have several start-ups that have been launched by our student groups.
It is a big ecosystem and our unique selling point is that when you are within the ecosystem, you are exposed to accelerated innovation; you have an accelerated route to market. For example, large companies join Climate-KIC because they are interested in being able to access innovation; an SME joins to have a seat at the top table with big business and public bodies; for universities, it gives them the opportunity to take their research right through to its commercial application that might otherwise be quite difficult.
What projects is the community currently undertaking?
One example of innovation in technology is Dutch start-up, Waste2Chemical, who have been working towards creating profitable technology for processing organic waste, agrofood and paper residues. During her studies at the Netherlands’ Wageningen University (a Climate-KIC partner), entrepreneur Kirsten Steinbusch discovered a mixed culture bacteria fermentation process that converts virtually any wet degradable organic waste material into medium fatty acids. These acids can be used as building blocks in the production of existing or new polymers, solvents, lubricants, coatings and even renewable fuels. Eventually, replacement of oil-based production by biological chemical production is feasible. The carbon dioxide emissions saved, due to replacing fossil fuels, are expected to be large. There will be a significant impact on the environment.
After their introduction to Climate-KIC by the Wageningen-based incubator StartLife, Waste2Chemical won the Climate-KIC Netherlands 2011 Venture Competition. The prize was a voucher of €1,500, which enabled them to purchase the patent. Climate-KIC also provided business coaching and a grant through our incubation programme. With this support, Waste2Chemical are looking for further investment in their business that turns waste into valuable building blocks for the chemical industry.
We spotted a viable business idea in Waste2Chemical and are helping them attract the best long-term investment.
How will the role of the Climate-KIC develop in Horizon 2020 and what are your aspirations for the future?
Our main aspiration is to produce more innovation of products and services and to have a real and genuine effect on climate change, addressing mitigation and adaptation. Climatic change is one of the key societal challenges for Horizon 2020 and we are in discussions with several parts of the European Commission, for example, DG Climate Action where we could work together on developing climate policy and providing the evidence on how to combat climate change.
Over the last 12 months, we have integrated our innovation projects, entrepreneurship support and education programme. We have focused our activities on eight major themes where Climate-KIC has expertise and can make a real difference on the world stage. These themes include creating energy efficient buildings, adaptation to climate change, increasing resource efficiency and developing a bio-based economy.
Climate-KIC has signed a seven-year agreement with the EIT and if all goes well, we will sign the second seven-year agreement. However, although the EIT’s Strategic Innovation Agenda proposes a steady-state level of funding for KICs, somewhere between €80-100m annually, that equates to 25% of our overall funding, in the longer-term the goal is to work towards self-sustainability. The remaining 75% comes from our partners and external sources and it is this component that we plan to increase as we move towards becoming more self-sustainable.
We will certainly be supporting SMEs, not only within Climate-KIC, but also in bidding for Horizon 2020 funding. Regional funds in Horizon 2020 will also be significant because our regions are crucial to ensuring that Climate-KIC innovation is shared with the whole of Europe; for example, our Polish region is already developing links with the Czech Republic and we hope we can extend our network of influence more broadly throughout this area.
A key challenge for us in Climate-KIC is that there is not an obvious climate change sector. We have therefore developed a project model called the Climate Market Accelerator that is aimed at increasing the speed between the invention and the market, but also helping to develop the market itself, i.e. bringing together the public and private sectors, tackling the challenges and defining what innovation is required. The climate change market is only just emerging and our work is quite unique for climate change.
Professor Mary Ritter
