Bioazul joins the EIC Greenhouse Gas programme

The European Innovation Council (EIC) is the European flagship innovation programme with a budget of €10.1 billion to support game changing innovations throughout the lifecycle from early stage research, to proof of concept, technology transfer, and the financing and scale up of start-ups and SMEs.

The EIC draws on a wide range of external advice and expertise in order to select the most promising projects and companies and to support them:

• EIC expert evaluators assess applications for funding against the criteria for excellence, impact and implementation.
• EIC jury members conduct face to face interviews with shortlisted companies and projects applying for funding.
• EIC coaches provide advice to companies and projects both at the application stage and for maximising the impacts of EIC funding.

The EIC beneficiaries can access to a full box of exciting business acceleration services and an extensive innovation network. The aim of these services is to boost connections and foster communication by creating a shared knowledge base and a virtual meeting-place where innovative and business partners can connect and leverage new partnerships.

EIC GREENHOUSE GAS PROGRAMME

As part of the Business Acceleration Services, the European Innovation Council offers the EIC Greenhouse Gas programme to support and expertise needed to assess, track and efficiently reduce the carbon footprint of the beneficiaries and co-create new green services and business. This will be done using a dedicated GHG-tool and co-creation activities & working groups with corporates, industrial associations, regions in carbon transition, and others.

Bioazul has recently joined this initiative with the aim of establishing a network of contacts with which to create synergies and identify needs to reduce the carbon footprint and emissions. We also participated the Kick Off Meeting of this programme on June, 6^th where we had the opportunity of presenting our innovations in the Agriculture and Forestry Working Group.

Co-creation activities will enable EIC beneficiaries to be more customer-oriented, improve the relationship among different players, and increase the chance of successfully adapting and inventing new products and services. By joining the EIC GHG co-creation activities, EIC beneficiaries will take advantage of partnering opportunities with Corporates, Industrial Associations, Regions in Carbon Transition and other EIC-funded SMEs.

In addition, EIC beneficiaries can participate in the online Working Groups on the EIC Community Platform. Working Groups on the EIC Community Platform help start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs to successfully establish co-creation teams (co-creation peer-to-peer) with the help of qualified business facilitators.

The EIC GHG tool (launching in June 2021) is a starting point for considering and developing the most efficient solutions to reduce GHG emissions and assess to what extent one company’s strategy is compatible with EU objectives. The GHG tool allows each EIC beneficiary to simulate the GHG emissions of their activities on the largest scope possible, i.e., their daily direct GHG emissions (e.g., site combustion such as on-building heating or mobile consumption such as vehicle fuel consumption) and their indirect emissions (e.g., manufacturing of sold products, business travel, waste, etc.).

The benefits of greenhouse gas reduction for SMEs are:

1. New business products or services created through innovation.
2. Increased sales through improved product/service competitiveness.
3. Better access to public and private Green Investment and procurement.
4. Improved energy and resource efficiency.
5. Increased business resilience trough Carbon Risk Management.
6. Strengthened Public reputation.
7. Anticipation on future regulations regarding sustainability.