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- September
2013
Philipp Pausder pitches Thermondo (heizkosten-senken.de)
Philipp Pausder, CEO of Thermondo (formerly known as FutureWatt), pitches their new online portal for heating cost reduction at ECO13 Berlin. The idea is to make buying heat as simple as buying electricity. At the same time, heating is often neglected in the discussion about the Energiewende (energy transition). In fact, consumers can save a lot of money and energy when they buy a new heating system and move from oil to gas or wood pellets. Combined heat and power (CHP) is a big trend in the consumer market, too. Most steps in the purchase process can be organised online before a plumber comes to your house to install the new heating system. Philipp is very happy with their traction and they just closed their seed round. But the heating e-commerce business will need more venture capital to grow, so put Thermondo on your watch list and get in touch.
Read more- 21
- July
2013
Prof. Eicke Weber is very optimistic about the solar industry
Ecosummit TV: Prof. Eicke Weber, Director of Fraunhofer ISE, is very optimistic about the future of the solar industry. Firstly, the PV cost curve is going down continuously. Even in Germany with Alaska-type sunshine, we can produce electricity with silicon-based PV for 10-12 cents/kWh. At this cost level, grid parity is already outperformed since 1 kWh costs 22 cents (net) in Germany if you buy it from your local utility. Making your own electricity and storing it in a solar battery is a smart economic idea. Secondly, the global solar market will grow 10 times from 30 GW/year in 2012 to 300 GW/year by 2025. At the same time, higher efficiencies and lower production costs make PV competitive with onshore wind and hydro power. The current oversupply of 60 GW/year is a temporary phenomenon that causes trouble for PV manufacturers for another 1-2 years. Afterwards, Europe should reenter the PV industry with a “multi-GW solar Airbus project” to drive the enormous PV industry again as a technology leader.
Read more- 16
- April
2013
Urban Keussen introduces Connecting Energies, the new CVC of EON
Ecosummit TV: Urban Keussen presents EON’s innovation strategy for its smart green utility transformation and introduces their new corporate venture capital (CVC) activities. At ECO12 Duesseldorf, Urban announced EON’s CVC called “Connecting Energies” that co-invests in mid and late stage startups in Europe and the US that are focused on distributed renewable energy, energy storage, smart grid and customers and data. Moreover, Urban and his team work on a lot of innovation that does not have a business case yet but may well have in the future. Thus they are open for joint projects with smart green startups, especially if their solution is able to accelerate the Energiewende (energy transformation), the key task of all utilities.
Read more- 5
- November
2012
Smarter, greener, leaner – startups accelerate the Energiewende at Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012
9 days to go until ECO12 Düsseldorf. The perfect moment to do some serious pattern recognition and talk about the cleantech startups to be featured on stage – and Ecosummit TV. Our second conference this year enjoys again a very high startup density: 26 startups present new solutions for accelerating the Energiewende (energy transformation). The Internet of things and cleantech grow together. More and more green startups develop smart hardware products that have an IP address. The startups pitching at Ecosummit control cars, helicopters, charging stations, PV systems, wind generators, batteries, street lights, homes and even entire cities over the Internet. Smarter, greener, leaner – that’s the way we want them.
Read more- 18
- October
2012
Urban Keussen presents EON’s smart green innovation strategy
Ecosummit TV: Urban Keussen, SVP Technology & Innovation, presents the smart green innovation strategy of EON at ECO12 Berlin. Urban gives a very informative lecture on how a big utility like EON analyses megatrends and new key technologies that are decisive for the Energiewende (energy transformation). Although EON is still very active in large-scale energy generation with fossil fuels, it invested over €7B in renewables during the last couple of years, mostly in wind. Urban is the perfect point of contact for high-quality cleantech startups that are interested in doing business with EON. We look forward to his upcoming talk at ECO12 Düsseldorf.
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- October
2012
Lean cleantech startup – New Context Conference Tokyo 2012
Only successful cleantech startups have a positive impact on climate change and global resource problems. The problem is that most hardware-based cleantech startups are very capital and time intensive. Entrepreneurs and investors constantly look for new strategies to accelerate the development and marketing of smart green innovation. Applying the lean startup philosophy to cleantech could be the perfect solution. Cleantech startups also search for scalable business model, product market fit, validated learning from customers and engine of growth. In this context, it was a special honour to go to Japan – especially after Fukushima – and speak about Lean Cleantech Startup at the spectacular New Context Conference Tokyo 2012 two weeks ago.
Read more- 31
- August
2012
Juergen Schmid of Fraunhofer IWES: the energy transformation to 100% renewable can be done
Ecosummit TV: “We are sure that we can supply 100% renewable energy,” says Prof. Dr. Juergen Schmid, Director of Fraunhofer IWES. The necessary transformation of our energy system to the 100% renewable energy system can be done and must be done as soon as possible because global energy demand and CO2 emissions grow exponentially. Renewable energy and energy efficiency are the 2 pillars of the future energy system. Prof. Schmid’s scenarios are an encouraging role model for other countries. If you want to get the big picture how to do it, this Ecosummit TV video is must-see. Let’s accelerate together the global transformation to the Smart Green Economy powered by 100% renewable energy. In fact, that’s exactly why we do Ecosummit.
Read more- 6
- May
2011
Ecosummit TV – Carl Berninghausen pitches 3G Clean Fuel Startup Sunfire
Sunfire CEO Carl Berninghausen pitches his super hot 3G clean fuel startup at ECO11. Afterwards, he is joined by his colleague Nils Aldag during the interview with Ane Mari Aakernes, our Ecosummit TV moderator. Based in Bremen with 7 employees, Sunfire raised €1.2M so far. Sunfire produces third generation synthetic bio fuel (3G bio fuel) without using biomass. Sunfire transforms CO2 and water into clean fuel using renewable energy.
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