/prod01/channel_3/media/tcd/tangent/images/EIT-cliimate-1.jpg)
EIT Climate-KIC is a European knowledge and innovation community, working to accelerate the transition to a zero-carbon economy.
Supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), we identify and support innovation that helps society mitigate and adapt to climate change. We believe that a decarbonised, sustainable economy is not only necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change, but presents a wealth of opportunities for business and society.
For more information on how you might get involved,
contact Head of Engagement Aine Phelan at
aine.phelan@tcd.ie
For more information on Climate-KIC at Trinity,
contact EIT Programme Manager Margaret Walsh at
margaret.walsh@tcd.ie
Climate KIC Impact Goals
Promote retrofitting and decentralised energy
Drive a significant increase in urban retrofit rates and enable district-scale clean energy production, paving the way for deep cuts in emissions.
Create green, resilient cities
Harness the force of nature in infrastructure design to build livable climate-resilient cities.
Accelerate clean urban mobility
Trigger the switch to clean urban mobility to achieve considerable cuts in urban transport emissions.
Sustainable Land Use
Make agriculture climate-smart
Instigate a substantial increase in the application of climate-smart agriculture solutions.
Transform food systems
Transform climate-damaging food value chains and enhance the climate resilience of the food supply.
Nurture forests in integrated landscapes
Grow carbon sequestration in forests and linked value chains, while avoiding deforestation.
Sustainable Production Systems
Recast materials production
Catalyse a switch to a circular economy and transform production for fossil-energy-intensive materials.
Reduce industry emissions
Partner with key industry stakeholders in cutting scope 3 emissions to reach science-based targets.
Reboot regional economies
Transition carbon-intensive regions to become zero-carbon innovation hotspots.
Decision Metrics & Finance
The mainstream climate in financial markets
Advance metrics, standards and instruments that enable transparent, true-cost and benefit accounting for a well below 2°C pathway
Democratise climate risk information
Enhance access to risk information through capacity building and a major expansion of the climate services market
Foster bankable green assets in cities
Develop capacity in preparing projects and investment vehicles to boost the availability of sustainable investment assets in cities.
For more information see www.climate-kic.org/who-we-are/making-an-impact/
Climate KIC Current Projects
The Climate Leadership Journey programme is an evolution of the Climate Innovation Leadership pilot programme merged with the Journey Summer School programme from EIT Climate-KIC.
Dedicated to empowering the future leaders and innovators, the Climate Leadership Journey takes the year-round elements from the Climate Innovation Leadership (CIL) pilot which is built on the foundation of the EIT Label framework and aims at empowering university students, young professionals from all disciplines and all levels to become active change agents.
It puts the Journey summer school at its core with its strong methodological core and pedagogy, which combines skills development and personal development with learning about systems transformation through contextualised and experiential learning. It prepares young people for the complexity and uncertainty in navigating climate action and empowers them to take action in a way that is meaningful to them and the ecosystem in which they operate.
The CLJ has two main assets, it is an extracurricular student-centric demand-led programme spreading and amplifying climate action with a residential and international summer school. The programme empowers students to become effective change agents through systems transformation, leadership, and community building. The programme will be implemented cooperating three countries: Latvia, Estonia and Ireland. The Lead Partner is Trinity, other partners are Riga Technical University & P368 - Cleantech Forest.
By the end of the programme students will be able to:
- Gain different skills, competencies, and knowledge and will be able to embrace the complexity of systems transformation;
- Demonstrate a common inter and transdisciplinary understanding of the challenges related to climate change;
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the entrepreneurial process;
- Deliver ideas, products, and services in response to climate challenges;
- Develop a professional network, work in interdisciplinary, international groups;
- Communicate about climate change causes, solutions, and consequences.
Recent Past Projects
The Journey developed talent for a zero-carbon future, through an intensive summer school programme based on systems innovation, networks, and using a high volume of KIC partners for delivery. The Journey's unique education format was designed to accelerate graduates into the Knowledge Innovation Community with the base knowledge needed to be system innovators, leaders, and change agents. In Dublin, we showcased systems innovation with local case studies. In 2020 a fully digital Journey was hosted by the School of Natural Sciences through the TCD Centre for the Environment.
We focused on key challenge areas of
- Sustainable land use
- Sustainable agriculture and food production
- Circular economy, with particular reference to bioeconomy
- Corporate climate leadership, including green finance and long-term planning to aid climate action.
We also worked with participants, Journey Alumni and local problem owners to develop the content. Over the last four years of running the Journey in TCD, we have now built on our strong track record in these subject areas and well-developed relationships with local researchers, innovators, government departments and agencies, NGOs and Climate-KIC alumni to deliver a well-rounded programme and prepare the participants for the next leg of their Journey.
EIT Climate-KIC Climate Innovation Leadership
Young people are calling for action on climate change, top graduates want to contribute to organisations, industries and businesses that are working towards a net-zero transition. This is a generation that recognises the need for systemic change and wants to be equipped to meet and drive forward the scale of change required. This means there is an urgent need for students to be trained in new skills relating to leadership, innovations and systems thinking.
The Climate Innovation Leadership Programme (CIL) was an evolution of the Master School Programme from EIT Climate-KIC; a programme with nearly ten years of experience in empowering and enabling students to act on climate challenges. Built on the foundation of the EIT Label framework, the Climate Innovation Leadership Programme was spreading an entrepreneurial mindset combined with multidimensional leadership skills over Europe as a tool to transform our societies in a just and sustainable way.
EIT Climate-KIC 2021 Accelerator
European cities are major contributors to climate change, material consumption and waste generation. However, they possess the potential to be cradles of innovation and transformation. The "Meridian' Circular Cities Accelerator is an EU-focused public-private bootcamp bridging the gap between cities’ need for circular transition solutions and high potential start-ups’ barriers to market entry. Meridian aims to be the leading circular city accelerator in Europe, as a lighthouse of public-private cooperation toward Europe’s 2030 circular economy transition. We'll support promising start-ups by providing the tools, opportunities and network to transform breakthrough innovations in circular activities, helping entrepreneurs and innovators undertake a critical analysis of how to create a sound commercial footing in order to successfully solve real end-user problems.
Our partnership, led by Trinity College Dublin together with Luvent Consulting and Danmarks Teknikse Universitet (DTU) and our corporate partners, UPS, will take a pragmatic, mentor-led approach that is grounded in commercial reality and borne of real-life experience. Our 2021 city partners include Dublin City Council, Berlin Senat and Athens City Council.
For more information on the EIT Climate-KIC 2021 Accelerator, please contact Breandán Goss at GOSSB@tcd.ie
EIT Climate-KIC REGREEN
REGREEN seeks to develop a Living Lab as a Service model where diverse actors collaborate in a physical or virtual space and employ an open innovation methodology to co-create, prototype, test, validate and promote the diffusion of innovative nature-based climate programmes, products, services, and processes. It is championed by an academic institution that sees merit in translating vast amounts of research-based knowledge into valuable and implementable ideas that can address the heat island effect through nature-based climate solutions. Trinity College Dublin is the lead partner, collaborating with the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Zagreb.
For more information on the EIT Climate-KIC REGREEN, please contact Immanuel Darkwa at IDARKWA@tcd.ie.
EIT Climate-KIC: Brewers Spent Grain (BSG 2.0)
NatPro, the Trinity Centre for Natural Products, based at the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, was a collaborator in an EIT Climate-KIC Innovation Project focusing on tailoring starter cultures for the production of new nutritional products from Brewers Spent Grain (BSG 2.0). TCD members, in particular Prof. Helen Sheridan, Dr Manuel Reuther, Dr Gaia Scalabrino and Dr Juan Valverde, were involved in this collaboration with international universities and industries, such as the Technical University of Denmark and Carlsberg.
The project aimed to produce plant-based ingredients and dairy substitutes derived from the fermentation of the sidestream brewers spent grain, aiming to achieve sustainable food production.
TCD focused on using metabolomics to generate chemical fingerprints of fermented products by 1H NMR and their analysis using chemometrics.
For more information please contact Gaia Scalabrino at SCALABRG@tcd.ie
Tangent, Trinity’s Ideas Workspace collaborated with Climate-KIC partners across Europe to co-ordinate a series of Masterclasses: two-day workshops for entrepreneurs hosted in various European cities. Masterclasses were dedicated to developing the skills entrepreneurs need to set up a business: from business model generation and building teams to negotiating and closing sales deals. Guest speakers are experienced entrepreneurs with an outstanding track record and teaching skills. High-level teachers and trainers with extensive knowledge and experience in their field create intense learning programmes for the Climate-KIC community.
To see more on Climate-KIC Masterclasses go to https://www.climate-kic.org/programmes/education/
EIT Climate-KIC Accelerator is the only EU acceleration programme focused on climate impact by cleantech commercialisation. In three stages, our program brought the knowledge, resources, tools and coaching a cleantech start-up needs for success.
Some examples of 2020, 2019 and 2018 participating start-ups include:
| 2020 Stage 3 Cohort | |
|---|---|
| FiltraCycle |
4.5 Trillion cigarette butts are littered every year, the chemicals in which leach into soil and water poisoning animals, plants and marine life. Filtracycle have developed a viable and profitable solution capable of tackling this devastating problem. |
| RecyclEye |
Recycleye combines computer vision with robotics to automatically sort waste. Recycleye is creating the world's first mobile, decentralised, small-scale, digital & fully automated material recovery facility - a mini-MRF. This will transform the recycling industry by cutting costs, minimising risk and reducing transportation.
|
| Sharo Mobility |
Sharo builds smart mobility solutions that help companies and institutions get commuters in and out of the office safely and efficiently while improving their wellbeing, productivity, and the environment.
|
| Styl Wrap |
The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions, more than all international flights & maritime shipping combined. Stylwrap solves size & fit issues for fashion retailers across the complete supply chain from design to size advice to online shoppers thus reducing emissions. |
| Cré-IQ | Cré-IQ is an environmental data, analytics & A.I platform that connects every open environmental data source in the world to enable the best environmental outcomes for a safer and more sustainable earth. |
| 2019 Final Cohort | |
|---|---|
| HempTech | Wicklow farmer and Irish Hemp Coop member, Ed Hanbidge has integrated hemp into his family farm in Baltinglass. Ed, who has farmed organically since 2015, has set up HempTech. He described the three main outputs from hemp as Cannabinoids used mainly to produce CBD extracts, fibre which can be used for insulation, bioplastics and biocomposite. |
| Dúla Bio | Growing the seaweed bioeconomy for social and environmental sustainability and a local circular economy for bioregional resilience. |
| Terratonics | TERRATONICS is a disruptive technology that offers a robust pioneering concrete-free foundation system to offsite manufacturers of Modern Methods of Construction systems (MMCs): such as Timber frames, Light Gauge Steel frames and Structural Insulated Panels Manufacturers. Terratonics will allow these offsite manufacturers to replace expensive environmentally damaging concrete in foundations and subfloors. The main component of the Terratonics solution is a Terrapod which is a structural pedestal beam carrier which transfers the building’s associated loads to the engineered ground below. The Terrapod is made from an engineering polymer that is extremely tough and has both a high tensile and compression strength. |
| BounceBack Recycling | Bounce Back Recycling (BBR) was established in 2017 in Galway to create a viable solution for problematic bulky goods. BBR is a recycling company whose aim is to divert as many mattresses & furniture away from landfills as possible. We provide a quality service for companies, councils & householders to recycle their unwanted waste rather than send it to landfills. We already work with a number of local authorities across the country, and many retail outlets to improve the recycling rates across the west of Ireland. With the lack of mattress recycling alternatives in the west of Ireland, BBR has established itself as a leader in the field. We reclaim and recycle steel from mattresses which are sold on to a local steel recycling company. |
| 2018 Final Cohort | |
|---|---|
| GreenFi | GreenFi Systems provides the training and tools for companies and NGOs to extend financial inclusion to farming and fishing communities while helping them to build resilience to climate change. We provide training materials for NGOs and companies to establish eco-funds with communities; a mobile application that allows communities to monitor their environmental compliance and track their financial activity. |
| Dowmann | Green Waste Is Not Waste By extracting valuable products from green waste, we show the world that green waste is a resource. A valuable source of useful products that can sustain everyday life through the climate crisis and beyond. We Turn Green Waste Into Pellets We offer local councils a green waste managed service to process park & roadside cuttings into pellets. We Deliver Big Impact Benefits For Local Councils |
| Fitted | Fitted is the first smart garment capable of measuring the human torso helping to reduce the volume of clothes and apparel that are sent back to manufacturers by consumers. |
| ChargiCity | ChargiCity designs and manufactures cost-effective, innovative and customer-friendly electric vehicle charging solutions that seamlessly blend into existing infrastructure and incorporate a wide array of smart city technology. Our vision is to electrify urban streets in a stylish and highly functional way and help accelerate the transition to sustainable transportation. |
For more details on the Accelerator, contact Breandán Goss at gossb@tcd.ie or see https://www.climate-kic.org/programmes/entrepreneurship/accelerator/