"An award to startups that change our climate"

"An award to startups that change our climate"


This article is part of the special Tech4Climate, Startups for the environment by Italian Techtoday (7 October) on newsstands with Il Secolo XIX and yesterday with La Stampa (in Piedmont, Val d'Aosta and Liguria), Sentinella del Canavese, La Provincia Pavese, Gazzetta di Mantova, Corriere delle Alpi, La Tribuna di Treviso, Il Mattino di Padova, The New Venice, Il Piccolo and Il Messaggero Veneto.

"Italian startups linked to the environment are a world that has considerable potential", he says Andrea Barbabella48 years old from Rome, Head of the Energy and Climate Division of the Foundation for Sustainable Development. He is among the organizers of the Climate startup award of Italy for climate and Step Tech Park, now in its second edition, which on 10 November will present a selection of our best young companies committed to climate change and among them the winner of this second edition. "The purely climatic part struggles more than other fields such as the circular economy, among the most popular, or food production and distribution".

How come?

"Many startups work in the circular economy because it is possible to try to innovate also through apps. This means services related to sharing means or to combat food waste. On the purely climate issue, app development, which is relatively cheap, is not an equally easy path to follow. Just think of the energy sector which is made up of infrastructures, networks, devices. It therefore has a much higher barrier to access ".

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What are the other fields that are the most popular?

"That of apps for companies to measure energy consumption, the production of greenhouse gases to be compensated with forest credits. But it is a" greenwashing "risk field: compensation is a much discussed approach. We must not compensate, but avoid emitting greenhouse gases and it is in this direction that we are going. So I do not think it is a sector with great prospects. Another area in vogue are apps to optimize consumption, both at home and for companies or the public, especially in this period. But it is not such an innovative sector, there have been many solutions for some time ".

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Let's go back to the climate then.

"Last year, during the first edition of the Climate Startup Award, we awarded Windcity, a startup that builds micro wind power plants that can also be used in the city. Other interesting things come from the new technologies for the accumulation batteries of the energy produced. from renewables. A really promising sector and not only for Italy. I am reminded of the British Gravitricity which has developed a system made of counterweights to conserve energy that does not involve the use of electronics. It is just an example of how much and how you can innovate by going well beyond chemical batteries. Finally, there are those who are working on economic models to better manage energy communities or to help the development of renewable energy plants, too often hindered by administrations and bureaucracy " .

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And what is happening in the rest of Europe?

"I do not have a privileged observatory on the rest of Europe. I can however say that we are talking about a single market. This means that the solutions developed here or elsewhere in the EU will then be adopted by everyone if they prove to be effective. Of course, there there are some differences. In the north, just to name one, they focus more on the use of biomass than we do. And, speaking of optimizations linked to cooperatives and energy communities, elsewhere they are much more developed than in Italy, where bureaucracy tends to In any case, the potential is enormous for everyone: if you have the right solution, precisely because it is a single market, it will be adopted everywhere ".

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What are the fields in which Italian startups raise funds more easily?

"The new generation batteries is among the first".

Hydrogen?

"It is not an easy sector for a startup. It requires high-level systems. Most of the new companies are offshoots of large industrial groups. In some ways they are always startups, but of a different type. Hydrogen is a solution that is not it is still clear what role he can really play ".

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One last thing. Why this award?

"In the path of ecological transition we need many innovations that we do not have now and startups are an important piece. This is why last year we launched the award as the Startup Award for the climate. There was no such thing and for us it was instead, it is important to understand what was happening in our country on this front. We present it again this year on November 10 at Ecomondo as part of the Sustainable Development Award which has more than ten years of history and which addresses different issues and will now also have a rib dedicated to climate startups ".

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