On August 3, the Skolkovo Foundation held a press conference devoted to the launch of GreenTech Startup Booster 2021, the international program for the development and implementation of innovative technology projects in environmental protection. The program was organized together with the Moscow Innovation Cluster and supported by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Construction, Housing and Utilities of the Russian Federation.
This has been the 2nd GreenTech Startup Booster held by the Skolkovo Foundation. It is the most ambitious accelerator program in Russia, aimed at getting startups involved in reducing negative human impact on the environment. Technological innovations are used worldwide to address the most relevant environmental issues. Most countries and major corporations redefine their development path to implement the strategy of environmentally focused growth.
Russia as a participant of global economy in the process of transition is now increasingly focusing on ‘green’ technologies. These technologies are one of the most attractive targets for venture investments, ranking third in terms of the investment amounts worldwide (after IT and Biotech)
During his introductory speech at the opening ceremony, Arkady Dvorkovich, the Chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation, noted that ‘green’ technologies are a priority both for the President and for the Government of the Russian Federation. Our country is working on the implementation of innovative projects in waste processing, capturing greenhouse gases, reducing hazardous emissions.
Arkady Dvorkovich, Chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation: “Environmental protection is the key focus for Skolkovo. Last year was the first time when we launched GreenTech Startup Booster and it performed really well. Over 850 companies from 190 cities sent us their applications, dozens of them were selected for pilot projects and trials with our industrial partners. And this is exactly what the main objective of the accelerator program is — to build the bridge between those who implement the technologies, and those who develop the solutions. This year 6 themes have been announced — the most relevant areas of activity in terms of sustainable development goals. All of them reflect not only the issues relevant for Russia, but also the challenges facing the global community. We hope that GreenTech Startup Booster will help us all find solutions for the most relevant issues, such as reducing the industrial impact on the environment.”
Pavel Sorokin, Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation assumed that the energy transition would take about 20 years and result in the growing competition in fuel and energy industry. However, the demand for new technologies in Russia is a good starting point to enter the global market. Competencies in RES-based power generation are being enhanced, technologies of hydrogen production both for domestic and export applications are being developed, and energy storage technologies and energy-efficient practices are being promoted.
Pavel Sorokin, Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation: “Green technologies are the focus for the global energy community. Our standing in the energy community in the next 15-20 years directly depends on how quickly we will join the global energy transition process. We do not expect it to be too fast, yet the share of hydrocarbons in the market may go down to 65-60%, and the structure of cash flows will necessarily change. Consumption will continue to grow, and competition will become even tougher. This is the reason why it is so important for Russia to have domestic solutions in this area, and to support the most promising segments — carbon capture and storage (CCS), RES, hydrogen-based power generation.”
Elena Semyonova from the Ministry of Construction told about the federal projects “Clean Water”, “Volga Rehabilitation” and about the industry-sponsored project “Smart City”. In the context of this project, the City IQ Index will be calculated for 203 cities, and sub-index “Environmental status” is part of this general IQ Index.
Elena Semyonova, the supervisor of the “Smart City” project by the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation, Deputy Director of FAI Project Directorate of the Ministry of Construction of Russia: “In the context of our industry-sponsored project “Smart City”, the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation annually calculates Urban IQ Index for over 200 localities. This monitoring shows how efficiently the ‘smart’ technologies are implemented in the urban infrastructure and economy. Unfortunately, environmental protection, which is one of the IQ sub-indices, has both the lowest average score and the lowest development pace among all the assessed areas. This means that today Russian cities do not widely use digital technologies aimed at monitoring and improving the environmental status of the city. Among those solutions are, for example, air and water quality monitoring, noise level monitoring, waste processing and transportation. New, more effective and scalable technologies are required, to monitor the situation in real-time, to support in preparing the action plan to improve the quality of urban environment. There are over 1,000 cities and towns in Russia, and the participants of such a program as GreenTech Startup Booster, have a chance to improve environmental conditions in each of them.”
Vladimir Dyakov from the Moscow Innovation Cluster Foundation, was talking about some useful services offered by MIC (project exchange, technological competitions) which can be useful when integrating the environmental solutions into the practices of major Moscow companies.
Vladimir Dyakov, the Head of Development Programs Directorate of the Moscow Innovation Cluster: “Moscow is one of the most innovative cities worldwide. According to a StartupBlink study, Russia’s capital city ranks among the top 3 cities worldwide in the field of implementing technologies aimed at combating Covid-19 consequences. Only New York and San Francisco have outpaced Moscow. I believe that environmental solutions can also become part of the urban environment. Today many departments at the Moscow Government monitor the development of ‘green’ technologies, while we at MIC know how to build the ‘bridge’ to have these innovations implemented in real-life conditions. As an example I would like to describe the cross-industry cluster “Green Moscow” and the results of the latest technological competitions, with a lot of startups engaged in Impact-projects shortlisted among them. Therefore, it won’t be a mistake to say that together with our colleagues from the Skolkovo Foundation we’ll be able to find complex solutions for the implementation and to raise funds for them.”
Andrey Korobov, the Director General of YATEC PJSC, said that by using ‘green’ technologies Russia will soon be able to produce neutral impact on the environment.
Andrey Korobov, the Director General of YATEC PJSC: “We have joined the environmental program, because we share the same ESG principles with Skolkovo. We’re building our development strategy according to UN’s SDGs — in long-term period it’s the only right way. So, in 2020 we successfully completed two large-scale environmental projects. The first one was a complicated engineering system which made it possible to avoid burning associated gas and reduce CO2 emissions by 160,000 tons per year. The second project was a biological wastewater treatment plant at one of the fields, whixh made the site environmentally neutral in terms of water circulation.”
Irina Musina, the head of the Accenture Sustainable Development Practice in Russia and Kazakhstan, presented the results of the study: according to those results, 98% of Russian companies recognized the priority of SDGs in their strategies, and are becoming more socially responsible.
Irina Musina, the Head of Sustainable Development Practice in Russia and Kazakhstan, Accenture: “We are very happy to become the Accelerator’s strategic partner and help them find new solutions to boost this transformation. In the context of Greentech Startup Booster we are planning to share our global experience, developments, vision, approaches and studies. Our experts will be among the jury members and act as mentors for the project. The most interesting solutions offered by startups at Greentech will be presented to Accenture’s existing and potential customers. In the future we are also planning to integrate the solutions of the project winners and winners in special nominations into our global initiatives.”
Georg Wießmeier, Head of R&D and Innovation at SIBUR, emphasized that when working on a new product, it is important to think how it can be transformed.
Georg Wießmeier, Head of R&D and Innovation, SIBUR: “Chemical industry is influencing and improving almost all domains of our everyday life. What we should take care of is to ensure this influence has minimum negative impact on our planet. SIBUR support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in R&D and innovation we focus in three main areas. The first and the most important one is to reduce, and where possible, to avoid CO2 emissions, mostly by continuously improving our production process. As it is impossible to fully stop CO2 emissions, we pay great attention to CO2 processing for manufacture of CO2-based chemical substances with the use of innovative technologies, and preferably reusable energy sources. Our third area of focus is processing, both mechanical and chemical, aimed at producing fertile materials or even monomers for production of primary materials.”
Natalya Tretyak, a Vice-President at Gazprombank, confirmed that sustainable development principles make the basis of all business processes of the bank, and expressed interest in the projects which may make the bank operations more environmentally friendly.
Natalya Tretyak, First Vice-President, Gazprombank JSC: “Technologies aimed at preservation of natural resources of the planet are of prior importance for the sustainable development of the global economy. We need innovations which make it possible to reduce waste, emissions, replace the existing materials with more environmentally friendly ones, to help companies make a step forward to responsible business operations. It is important for Gazprombank to support advanced projects in this field and by doing so we directly contribute to reducing negative impact on the environment.”
The partners of GreenTech Startup Booster 2021 are: Yakutsk Fuel and Energy Company (YATEC), Accenture, Mosenergo, Gazprombank, Total Energies, Sibur, Gazpromneft, Norilsk Nickel, Helyx, Severstal, TMK, Almaz Group, EDF, Enel, Ilim, WIPO Green, Climate-KIC, the International Association of Science Parks (IASP), and Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).
The first GreenTech Startup Booster was held in 2020. Among the participants were 853 projects from 190 cities of the world. The teams that passed the full cycle of the competition proved that the their solutions are in demand, relevant and efficient.
Applications are invited until September 30, 2021.
