Climate-KIC Spain is involved in the Startup Europe Week (SEW)
In The News
05 Feb 2016
Climate-KIC as a representative of one of the best accelerator of Spain, it has been invited to the Startup Europe Week, which is organized and funded by the European Commission, with the aim of boosting and promote entrepreneurial initiatives.
More than 200 towns and cities in 350 European regions have joined this initiative from 1 to 5 February, where they co-organized and held these events and workshops throughout the European network of cities for innovation and entrepreneurship.
The aim of these transnational simultaneous conferences about entrepreneurship throughout Europe was double. On the one hand, it is expected to identify those entrepreneurs with innovative business projects and provide access to all information about those policies in their environment they are being developed (grants, incentives, co-working spaces, funding) and receive expert advice for developing their business idea, as well as European funding programmes which they could be eligible. Moreover, the SEW wants to promote networking of institutions, investors and businesses to exchange successful experiences and generate more opportunities for implementation of entrepreneurial initiatives.
Around ten of events were held in Valencia Region and one of the most succesful seminars were held yesterday in Castellón, organized by its County Council and Espaitec, where more than a hundred entrepreneurs in the province met. In this sense the presence of Climate-KIC Spain was particularly expected, since it is the only green accelerator specializing in cleantech of those who participated in the event.
It was told that green economy is not a temporary trend motivated by the recent climate summit in Paris, COP21, but already is a real challenge that we must tackle with the support of a committed society and with those trained professionals who could sort out the problems we face.
From Climate-KIC, as its director said, Jose-Luis Muñoz “not only are creating innovative solutions to address climate change and adaptation, but have created new businesses and jobs for building a green and low carbon economy, and through training programmes of professional mobility, such as the Pioneers into Practice, or entrepreneurial initiatives as the Accelerator Programme or the cleanteach ideas competition, ClimateLaunchpad, are enabling a paradigm shift in today’s economy “.
The entrepreneur are facing to many and different challenges innumerable, but with positive attitude, leadership and the right tools, they can make transition happens creating more opportunities and business. Muñoz encouraged attendees to work and engage them in interesting and promising issues and topics such as improvement in sustainable building or rehabilitation, sustainable urban planning, mobility plans and promotion of the bicycle or electric vehicle, improving industrial processes and new products, waste management, water treatment, or land management, etc., where the green economy takes on a special role.
During the development of this SEW event, Salvador Aguilella, Deputy Economic Development of Castellón County Council, jointly with some of its technicians have been able to talk to the participants in this event organized together with the College Campus Espaitec about all these concerns.
Aguilella was pleased “with the high participation of people interested in starting new business or running their companies, whose participation has been very practical and useful. We have celebrated this day because we want our entrepreneurs have the same opportunities as the rest of Europe to flourish and guarantee them jobs and wealth for the territory. There are many sources of funding, training, monitoring and advice that institutions offer to entrepreneurs, but it would be useless if they don´t know how to use them, and that goal also walks this meeting. ” The day has been primarily concerned with specific tools available to support entrepreneurs (grants, coworking and financing, among others) to help them take advantage of these resources to promote their business, or existing initiatives for new entrepreneurs and companies, as well as cases and practical tips for European funding for startups and new businesses.
