Climate Innovation Vouchers: summing up Ukraine’s largest grant program for green innovators

April 12, 2019.

    *** On the 10th of April, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Delegation of European Union to Ukraine and Greencubator announced the winners of the 5th stage of Climate Innovation Vouchers program. A panel discussion on financing for climate innovations in Ukraine proceeded the award ceremony.
    5 Ukrainian companies became the winners and received funding for the development of their green business solutions worth EUR 100 000:
    Delfast — electric bikes certification and patenting, technical and usability improvements.
    Integro-SD — control and automation system for the proprietary organic fertilizers production line; certification.
    Integral Complex Systems — Low-power long-range wireless solution for energy systems control and data exchange.
    IOT TRADE — control system and web-interface for company’s central hub for smart-home devices (thermostats and sensors).
    Obolon Oil — industrial scaling for serial production of mobile waste plastic-to-fuel processing complex.
    The panelists pointed out that cleantech developers face the same issues when looking for funding, as most tech startups. However, as Andriy Sorokhan, Venture Lead U.Ventures/ Western NIS Enterprise Fund noticed, there are not enough experts familiar with climate innovations, benefits, and risks of green investing.
    Sergiy Maslichenko, Associate Director at the Energy Efficiency and Climate Change Team at EBRD, said: "During the first phase of the Climate Innovation Vouchers program 31 companies got grants to develop their green projects. We've been working effectively during the last two years with Ukrainian businesses, and we can see great potential and significant opportunities, but also the need for ecosystem development of startups in the early stages."
    Svitlana Kolomiets, an environment policy expert, co-founder at ReThink NGO, emphasized that the Ukrainian business market should pay more attention to the entrepreneurial culture. It is crucial for forming the green business industry and ecosystem. She also stated we need to develop human resources and work more intense with personnel.
    Roman Kravchenko, the founder at accelerator laboratory IoT Hub, who has invested in several Ukrainian cleantech products, specified the lack of team-building relationships in startups' culture. Judging from his own experience, he noted that this issue can be solved by the storytelling from real Ukrainian companies. That will help share knowledge and experience.
    This stage completes the first phase of Ukraine’s largest grant program for cleantech and low-carbon technology developers. During the five waves of the program, 31 beneficiaries received funding for the development of their green business solutions worth a total of 1 million euro.
    Climate Innovation Vouchers program is launched as a part of the EBRD program “Finance and Technology Transfer Centre for Climate Change” (FINTECC), funded by the European Union. Ukraine became the first country within EBRD operation area, to launch such a program. The program is implemented by the NGO Greencubator. During the five stages 31 Ukrainian companies have received climate vouchers worth approximately 1 mln euro. Read more about the program and its winners on the www.climate.biz