Just four months after ten Ukrainian green startups received Climate Innovation Vouchers (CIVs) worth €400,000 in total, another five eco-friendly startups founded by Ukrainians have been awarded the CIVs worth €170,000.
The vouchers were offered by the EBRD and Greencubator, a local non profit which promotes green entrepreneurship in Ukraine, on May 23.
The five beneficiaries included:
- PassivDom, a Ukrainian-founded startup offering “sustainable self-learning modular houses using 3D-printing technology”
- Symvol, a Kyiv (Kiev)-based company which uses special cast iron exceeding its analogs by five times in terms of performance properties to produce plain bearings
- Sirocco Energy, which touts itself “the world’s first wind panels for clean energy generation within the cities”
- Farming enterprise Limanskoye, an aquaponic farm which frees water from fish waste by-product by turning it into fertilizers
- Go To-U, a Ukrainian startup which connects drivers of electric cars with free charging stations. In late 2017, the startup was selected to participate in the 18-month Climate-KIC, world’s first real-life business school for promising cleantech entrepreneurs with a chance to attract €95,000 of funding in total.
The CIV project was initiated by the EBRD’s Finance and Technology Transfer Centre for Climate Change (FINTECC) programme, which is financed by the EU Neighbourhood Investment Facility (NIF).
Ukraine has become the first of the EBRD’s countries of operations to benefit from the CIVs, where the project is implemented by Greencubator.
It is expected that the CIV program, with a total budget of €1 million, will support around 50 innovative projects in Ukraine until the end of 2018. So far, fifteen local companies have been awarded vouchers.
Vouchers for individual projects may range from €20,000 to €50,000 depending on their innovativeness, complexity and potential benefit. Further recipients will be identified via three more rounds of the competitive selection process.
