The Swedish Research Institute partners with EIT Climate-KIC
Climate-KIC has partnered with The Swedish Research Institute (RISE) to strengthen its ability to work proactively with innovation. RISE works collaboratively to ensure Swedish business competitiveness internationally and to contribute to sustainability.
Urban transitions, sustainable production systems, sustainable land use and decision metrics & finance are key focus areas for EIT Climate-KIC, a European research and innovation initiative launched seven years ago and today represented in 24 countries.
KIC (Knowledge and Innovation Communities) is a series of EU-funded partner networks that combine businesses, research centers and universities with funds from the EIT European Institute for Innovation and Technology.
Contacts with industry
Climate-KIC alone has an annual turnover of EUR 80 million per year.
"Climate-KIC has more than 250 partners, which provides many exciting openings for collaborations. The challenge for Climate-KIC is to create far better opportunities for our partners to cooperate”, says Anders Wijkman.
About half of Climate-KIC partners are from industry, universities and colleges make up a quarter. Some 50 cities are also included - among them Malmö and Gothenburg in Sweden.
One factor that makes RISE attractive for EIT Climate-KIC is RISE’s broad business contacts.
Strong European network
"It is clear that we must move on, from looking for new solutions to utilize and scale up the best solutions. That requires a lot of commitment from industry”, says Martin Kylefors, RISE coordinator in Climate-KIC.
"Becoming a member of Climate-KIC makes us part of a strong European network that provides better conditions for both the climate and business benefits," says Margaret McNamee, Technical Director of RISE.
Anders Wijkman has a background in politics, including in the European Parliament. One of his many assignments was to be chairman of the Environmental Objectives Committee, who presented Sweden's climate strategy until 2045, and chairman of the international thought club, Club of Rome. He was appointed chair of Climate-KIC earlier this year. He sees two major challenges in the near future:
“The first is to focus on break-through innovation. We can never meet the climate goals without technology leaps. A second challenge is to become less dependent on EU funds and build alliances with other financiers”.
RISE has previously entered partnership with four other KICs; EIT Health, EIT Digital, EIT Inno Energy and EIT Raw Materials.
Contact:
Martin Kylefors
Senior Advisor RISE Built Environment
+46 (0) 70 641 58 86
