Climate KIC Spain Partners’ Day
Valencia, 9 May 2018.
Climate KIC Spain has held its Partners’ Day, a meeting with the Spanish network of partners that aims to raise awareness of the Climate KIC priorities through the areas of Focus, provide in-depth information on the impact goals and increase the possibilities of collaboration and networking among participating entities.
The event was opened by Climate KIC CEO, Kirsten Dunlop, who spoke through a video conference to encourage attendees to work together to build a zero carbon economy. “We are a partnership-based organisation, the partners are the backbone of our whole climate innovation ecosystem. Climate KIC catalyses and supports climate innovation, but it is our partners who make that innovation happen,” Kirsten said during his speech.
In the same way, the Director General of Climate KIC Spain, José Luis Muñoz, highlighted “the power of partnership” in the Climate KIC community and the importance of “thinking big to achieve great challenges capable of providing real and innovative solutions to face global warming”. For the Director General, this kind of meeting represents “a unique opportunity to share our views and beliefs, align around our goals, identify capabilities, join together and build a new forum for dialogue”.
Climate KIC Spain’s Partners’ Day is a chance to build our collective assets and create shared goals. It has been designed to increase knowledge among partners, make new connections, build new relationships and increase the network with the participants and come away with a sense of where expertise, capabilities, knowledge and support lie across the network. This has been a chance to learn about new cross-sectoral initiatives in areas such as cities, finance and circular economy, and how different partners from across the Spanish network contribute to them.
Urban Transitions (UT), Sustainable Land Use (SLU), Sustainable Production Systems (SPS), Decision Metrics & Finance (DMF) and Education have been the key areas. An Climate KIC facilitator has helped participants to understand the areas of focus and its impact goals, to identify possible project ideas and to bring together the partners for implementing consortia.
Brian Kilkelly, Urban Transition Development Lead at Climate KIC has dynamized the Urban Transitions group and explained the impact objectives of this area to create projects that help create the climate-resilient, zero-carbon towns and cities of the future.
Line Gry Knudsen, Acting Director of Education at Climate KIC, was in charge of the Education stakeholder group to help them link Climate KIC’s impact goals in this area with the areas of interest of each of the participating entities.
Fabrizio Rosi, SLU Programme Lead, has been in charge of the Sustainable Land Use group to present the priorities of this area of focus and helped participants to identify ideas and projects that could be financed to accelerate climate-smart agriculture, sustainable food and climate-resilient forests.
The teams were also advised by Ted Grozier, Flagship Manager of Climate KIC, Riyong Kim, Acting Director of Decision Metrics & Finance and Skylar Bee, project manager of Local Carbon City Lab of Climate KIC.
