For the past four years, ClimateLaunchpad has been growing their green business competition. Their 2019 season is underway, with competing countries from almost 50 countries. Each country receives applicants, hosts national level Boot Camps and competitions, and then three winners from each country head to the Global Grand Final – this year being held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
In November, the CleanTechnica team traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland, to cover the 2018 Climate Launchpad Global Grand Final event. This event, bringing together hundreds of participants from as many countries, is billed as the “global green business competition.” It’s a fascinating event, full of energy and innovation from climate-focused entrepreneurs and experts.
We spoke with the Frans Nauta, the founder of ClimateLaunchpad, at the Global Grand Final to get the inside scoop on what early stage startup themes were really taking off, which areas he wasn’t seeing teams do as much work in, and what keeps him going.
ClimateLaunchpad, the world’s green business competition, just completed its 2018 Grand Final in Scotland. Each year the competition grows in both size and reach. The 2018 competition featured a record of 1,500 cleantech entrepreneurs applying for National Competitions in 44 countries, and 50 Boot Camps across the globe.
Ukraine is one of the many countries competing in ClimateLaunchpad next week in Scotland. Learn about the national winners from the Ukraine and the climate solutions their businesses can fix.
Solid cleantech ideas can arise anywhere around the world, and increasingly they are coming from talented entrepreneurs in countries, even those with economies that are focused on oil, like Nigeria, Kazakhstan, or Azerbaijan, where oil is literally pouring out of the soil. So how do these brave minds plan to succeed there, right in the middle of the fossil fuel universe?
In a world where humanity acknowledged that its addiction to meat was the single largest human contribution to global climate change, we would want alternatives and they would taste good. It turns out that somebody is thinking ahead, and that guy’s name is George Vou, founder and CEO of Mighty Meat. We had a chat with George when he came on our radar as one of the participants in this year’s ClimateLaunchpad Global Grand Final.
ClimateLaunchpad is an increasingly global competition that serves to vet and coach climate change focused startups in an effort to bring the best to the surface. The goal is to accelerate the pace at which new climate change focused innovations and startups grow up and ultimately, to provide a — wait for it — launchpad for them to take off from.
ClimateLaunchpad is part of EIT Climate-KIC, the European Union’s leading program for climate innovation. This year marks the 5th edition of the ClimateLaunchpad competition. In the time since its inception, more than 4,000 ideas have been entered into this global competition.
We originally connected with the Go To-U team as we were planning our Cleantech Revolution Tour event in Berlin, Germany, and Wroclaw, Poland. Then Andrea and I met them in Cyprus during this Climate Launchpad Grand Final event. And we collaborated yet again for our recent EV charging conference in Warsaw, Poland.
