(R)evolutionize Green Cities

Urban Environment

When we‘re talking about „Urban Environment“, we’re talking about the cities, villages and communities where you live. We’re talking about the street you put your foot on when you leave your house, the park where you relax on a hot summer day, the outside seating area of your favorite restaurant, the bench you sit on drinking a coffee while waiting for your bus.
We’re not talking about the remote agricultural areas, but where people live closely together and can have an impact on climate change and pollution every single day.

Tracks

Reduce Emission

Optimize processes in urban areas to reduce pollution! This track ranges from the optimization of infrastructures, municipal services or urban mobility to areas like water management

There are a lot of processes in our everyday life that can be significantly improved to reduce pollution. We can start with an alternative to all the throw away coffee cups, think about ways to have packages delivered not 3 times, but once or just make sure an empty trash can doesn’t get picked up while a full one is left. So please ask yourself: Where do I see inefficiencies? Where do we overdo things? Where could we replace old technologies with new green ones?

Actively clean

Create business cases and technologies that can actively clean the environment and thus show a negative pollutant balance!

We always hear people telling us „There’s no way to turn back the wheel“… but is there ? We know about carbon capture technologies, we know plants „store“ CO2 and bind particulates, what else do we know our could we imagine? Everything that caused climate change has been on earth before, we did not import anything from space. But we changed its form and released it into the environment. Is there some way to reverse that?

Adapt to new environments

Create business cases that help adapting to more extreme environmental conditions, so negative impacts are mitigated or even benefits can be realized!

Extreme weather conditions are on the rise. Heat-waves, extreme rain for short periods of time, mild winters and more storms all around the year. We usually perceive those events as a threat. But could there be a way how to use them to our advantage? Heat is essentially energy. We have heavy rain going into our sewer system while at the same time we have declining groundwater supplies. Can you find a way to turn a weakness into a strength?

Educate, empower and incentivise

Create business cases to educate, empower and incentivize citizens about a more environmentally friendly way of life in order to facilitate behavioral change!

You don’t know, what you don’t know. All of us want to make the right decision. But when it comes to complex issues like climate change, it is very tough to grasp this complex issue, fully understand it and then be able to make the well-educated, right decision. How could we help people to make the right decision? We could educate them and explain why they should act a certain way, we could incentivice them to behave a certain way by making public transportation free or we could make the right way actually the more desired, the more fun way. Do you have an idea how to achieve that?

Be creative!

If you have business cases that are innovative, eco-friendly and help to tackle climate change and reduce pollution of our environment, EnBW Innovation is waiting for you!

Well, just be creative?

Inspirational sources

The Global Risks Report

Urban Services Report

Competitiveness of Citites Report

Innovate Europe Report

Top 10 Urban Innovations Report

EnBW Innovation x You

With SP4RK EnBW Innovation supports teams on their way from the first idea to the scalable startup: Access to its internal and external innovation and expert network and close networking with the existing Starup portfolio provides the breeding ground for unique business models!

SP4RK operates thereby from ideation to Go to Market and serves this spectrum with 4 different incubation programs. 

The goal of this challenge is to integrate the winners into the so-called 16-week program. The fundamental assumption is that a sustainable business model has already been identified in the course of the challenge.

The aim of the 16-week programme is to jointly promote market entry. If the 16-week program is successful, EnBW Innovation offers a wide range of other options, up to possible venturing.