This April, Berlin will be home to the second Start Up Energy Transition Award and SET Tech Festival. With our application round finished, our Reading Jury has jumped into action! Over 96 energy experts from around the world are combing through all the applications to decide who makes it onto our Top 100 list of energy transition-related start-ups! This year, the competition was extremely strong and our innovators rose to the challenge, with applications coming from all over the world.
In total, our community grew by 22 countries and we now have a global network of 88 countries. Applications for the Award 2018 came from 68 countries in total.
Where have we grown?
While almost all regions are represented, we are really excited to note large growth in Africa and Asia.
Africa
In Africa, start-ups from 16 countries applied for the 2018 Start Up Energy Transition. Five of those nations are new to our awards, while applications from Kenya and Nigeria even doubled! These two continue to demonstrate an exceptionally strong and growing sense of entrepreneurism for the energy sector.
Overall, our Africa network now includes 21 countries and we plan on continuing that trend. We are so grateful for our African network partners that continue to drive the energy transition and with whom we look forward to growing with.
Asia
Since our inception, we’ve had a strong representation in Asia. This year, however, we are extremely happy to welcome even more of East Asia and Central Asia into our network. With new applicants from Cambodia, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, over 18 nations are part of the global Start Up Energy Transition network.
We couldn’t have achieved this without our Asian network partners and we look forward to uncovering more energy start-ups from this point forward!
A Special Thanks To The Government of Canada
One of the largest differences this year is our amazing Canadian Country Partnership. We are extremely satisfied and grateful for this opportunity to work with Canada and the impact that it had on our North American representation. Canadian applications alone tripled, while North American applications, as a whole, doubled.
Needless to say, these awards are already a great success and the growth we’ve seen demonstrates just how passionate actors around the world are to innovate in the energy sector. The next step is our Tech Festival on April 16th. This will be a day full of start-up pitches, expert workshops, intimate discussion rounds and a large startup exhibition wrapped in an atmosphere that lets you break out of common thought patterns and bring innovations to life. All our welcome to this event, including investors, corporate actors, other start-ups and private citizens, as well! We will be announcing our speakers and panel discussions in the coming weeks so stay tuned.
At the moment, we have are offering early-bird tickets until the end of February for those wishing to attend. You can purchase those on our website. We look forward to seeing you there!
