Climate Market Accelerator

Institute’s role: Lead partner and UK pilot lead.

Background: The aim of the Climate Market Accelerator (CMA) was to speed up the time it takes for climate change adaptation and mitigation innovations to reach the market. The CMA was a pan-European project, working with leading experts to help demand side partners define their real world challenges in ways which would stimulate suppliers, innovators and researchers to respond with effective solutions.    

Challenge: The market in climate change adaptation and mitigation innovations is still young and a lack of confidence in new approaches, restricted opportunities to trial new solutions and concerns about risk and reward are acting as barriers to take-up. Alongside this, many innovation support initiatives tend to focus on the supply side (technology push), rather than on the demands of buyers (market pull).  

Activity: CMA activity included demand-led pilots across Europe - one of which was carried out in the UK and was led by the Institute. Focusing on the built environment, the Institute set up two buyer networks of property owners, managers and investors, who are actively driving the low carbon agenda. Known as Sustainable Innovation Forums (SIFs), these identified key climate change innovation challenges in the retail and commercial property sectors.

The other CMA pilots included:

• uncovering innovative technologies for electricity demand management in homes and small businesses (NPL, UK)
• increasing adoption rates of energy efficiency innovations among SMEs (NEGOS, Hungary)
• supporting a sustainable and safe regeneration of industrial buildings and sheds which promotes efficient use of energy (Aster, Italy)
• uncovering close to market energy efficiency innovations for applications in high street supermarket outlets (Valencia Institute of Buildings, Spain)
• improving energy and carbon efficiency across property portfolios (Knight Frank, Poland)
• establishing the market potential for technologies that recover energy from water flows (COWI A/S, Denmark and Germany)
• developing low carbon and energy efficient solutions for urban transport systems (Climate-KIC, Germany)
• working with Berlin utility companies to identify and facilitate real-world neighbourhood-scale climate innovation opportunities and solutions (Climate-KIC, Germany)
• creating a pan-European public procurement network to support local authorities in developing practices, knowledge and relationships that enhance the innovation capacity of their purchasing activity (Birmingham City Council, UK)
• development of an online platform to stimulate plastics processors to exchange small quantities of high grade secondary plastics which would otherwise go to landfill or incineration (TU-Delft, Benelux and Germany)
• unlocking maximum demand for local wood-based composite materials and green chemicals (Climate-KIC, France and Germany).

Learning and best practice from these project pilots was used to inform future Climate-KIC funded activity.

Further information: More information about CMA is available here.

Funder: The project is co-funded by the Climate Knowledge and Innovation Community (Climate-KIC), an initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).