On Monday 7 April, at the EU Energy Summit organised by the European Business Summit (see other news), experts gave the keys to developing cleantech companies in Europe.
For Julia Reinau, Senior Director of Breakthrough Energy, an organisation founded by Bill Gates, companies, investors and politicians need to focus on the demand for the products that are produced. “If you want to have a recipe for scale-up, first and foremost you have to look at demand, and then at the barriers to accessing demand and funding”, she stressed. She felt that the use of public funding to de-risk private sector financing would be absolutely crucial, as otherwise investment would not flow into these sectors. To obtain financing, she recommends looking at this question from the angle of what investors need.
While European equity in mining and minerals will be very difficult, Ludivine Wouters, Managing Partner at consultancy firm Latitude Five, points out that “EU investment and commercial banks have banking capacity and have worked hard to retain their teams and their exposure to mining and minerals around the world”. “Over the next six to nine months, when the Commission reassesses the use of cohesion funds, or even social funds, when it releases a series of guarantees, part of this exposure will have to be allocated to mineral value chains”, she said. “This should be done by private sector banks who know the sector, who know what a real project looks like and what makes it work”, she added.
Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Start-ups, Research and Innovation, said that the Commission is currently working on amendments to the relevant public procurement laws.
Finally, according to Carl-Erik Lagercrantz, CEO of the Vargas Holding incubator, there needs to be a focus on the entire value chain. He cited the example of the Chinese with batteries, where they have developed the value chain from the extraction of materials to the product containing the batteries, i.e. electric vehicles. “We might be good at innovation. We might be good at supporting but what about commercialisation?” he asked rhetorically. (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)