ClimateLaunchpad finalists revealed 

The competition aims to find Australia’s best and brightest innovators and entrepreneurs in the cleantech and innovation scene.

ClimateLaunchpad’s six finalists will vie for the winning spot in a global competition that mentors businesses creating sustainable solutions for the world’s climate crisis.

The finalists – whose products and services span  agriculture, clean battery technology and sustainable 3-D printing – will be seen by representatives from the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources as well as sustainable finance experts and funding specialists.

The worldwide cleantech and green business pitching competition, now in its sixth year in Australia, is run by EIT Climate-KIC and this year, more than 60 countries ran the program. .

Climate-KIC Australia receives funding and support from the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, the RACE for 2030 Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) and the Future Battery Industries CRC.

 Principle of innovation programs for Climate-KIC Australia Sina Lengelsen said fixing climate change, one start-up at a time “is a big challenge”. 

“That’s why we offer loads of possibilities to partner up, so we can speed things up,” she said.

The program began with 20 early-stage cleantech and green start-ups taking advantage of a three day education program as well as workshops with industry leaders in sustainable finance and business development.

“One of the goals of the program and its accompanying competition is to help the innovators and entrepreneurs finesse their innovations into something scalable, customer ready and to be poised to make a true climate impact,” Lengelsen said.

Lengelsen said teaching the participants about how to provide carbon reduction estimates and other relevant data for investors is a focus.

“Part of the program includes a workbook with tools to help assess your positive impact for [ESG investment purposes] that is distributed to everyone who is involved. You do not have to give away any IP … our mission is simply to train these innovators in how to disrupt a market and to understand those tools to track their emissions savings,” she said.  

“We also show them how to prepare a proper pitch deck and to understand exactly what problem your product or service can solve.”

The Australian finalist teams are:

• Ecosystem Farms: Ecosystem Farms is a farming platform that integrates agriculture and aquaculture, leveraging natural ecosystems. The platform uses 95 per cent less water, no soil, no chemical fertilisers, is compatible with large scale equipment like tractors, and is scalable for large primary production.

• Origo: Origo is Australia’s biggest product sourcing platform and software that analyses the sustainability of the entire product chain. The platform allows food companies to make informed decisions around transport, logistics, packaging and sourcing of products to reduce the carbon footprint of single products and product chains.

• Spark3D: Spark3D manufactures 3D printers for electronics, solar cells and batteries, that can deposit metals, semiconductors, polymers and insulators, faster and at higher resolution than existing techniques, while using less energy, and creating almost no waste.

• SythLett Cells: SythLett Cells manufacture slower-degrading, lightweight, non-flammable batteries for use in aviation.

• Thermal X Engineering: Thermal X Engineering brings heat pump technology into low temperature energy generation applications to create more efficient, more cost effective and more widely applicable energy generation solutions.

• UpSol: A social enterprise supplying rapidly deployable, containerised solar power systems with back-up battery energy storage as a sustainable substitute for diesel powered generators.

The top three teams following the finals on 9 September will advance to the Asia Pacific regional final on 22 September.

The winner from the Asia Pacific round wins a pitching slot at the ClimateLaunchpad Global Grand Final in October where they will have access to a global market.