• Events
• StartGreen Award 2018

Community award for the green start-up scene

The winners of the StartGreen Award 2018 have been announced. The award ceremony took place for the fourth time in a row as part of “Gründerwoche Deutschland” at the Federal Environment Ministry. The StartGreen Award is given to innovative start-up concepts, start-ups and companies whose services and products contribute to climate protection and sustainability.

This year, the Community Award for the green start-up scene was presented in three categories: Founding concept (not yet founded), start-up (up to 5 years) and energy of the future (0-15 years). For the first time, the SGA was looking for concepts and start-ups in the “Energy of the Future” category that work on solutions for the sustainable production and use of energy. The category is supported by the energy supplier EWE.

The awards went to ME Energy from Berlin (category start-up concept), Nuventura from Berlin (category start-up) and Solmove from Potsdam, Brandenburg (category energy of the future). The Clean River Project association from Winningen (Rhineland-Palatinate) received the special “New Perspectives” prize.

StartGreen@School promotes young talent

During the event, the StartGreen@School Award was presented for the second time in a row, honouring outstanding green student companies. The prizes went to Schmids Druck Studio, Carlo-Schmid-Oberschule Berlin-Spandau (1st place), Fair Plant-Gruppe, Maristenkolleg Mindelheim, Bavaria (2nd place), SPEED, Werdenbergschule, Trochtelfingen, Baden-Württemberg (3rd place).

The special prize SDG Investments with a value of 5000 Euro each was won by the start-ups BLAUHERZ. from Weinheim, Baden-Württemberg, Manyfolds UG from Munich, Bavaria, ME Energy from Berlin, Nuventura from Berlin and Solmove GmbH from Potsdam, Brandenburg.

“We are delighted that the StartGreen Award has been so well received by the founding teams and start-ups and that we have had a consistently high number of applicants since the first award ceremony in 2015,” explains Prof. Dr. Klaus Fichter, Head of the StartGreen Award and Director of the Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability, initiator of the competition. The quality of the applications and the innovativeness of the submitted start-up and business concepts had even increased. “We are observing a professionalisation of the green start-up scene, which is also reflected in the presentation of our own projects”.

From 4 October, the green start-up community was able to participate in a public voting to determine who is worthy of the award. The final pitch before a jury of experts was about cash and non-cash prizes worth more than 60,000 euros. In addition to a cash prize of 5,000 euros per category, the #SGA18 main partner SDG Investments offered to register the finalists in the “Start-up” and “Energy of the Future” categories on the SDG Investments platform (equivalent to 5,000 euros each).

With StartGreen Award 2018 to San Francisco

All applications in the “Start-up” category also had the opportunity to qualify for the Cleantech Open Ideas Challenge in California. And the winners of the German preliminary round of the Cleantech Open Ideas Challenge (California) proved to be professionals in the art of presentation. They pitched their project prior to the award ceremony.

In cooperation with the StartGreen Award, the RKW Competence Center selected the start-ups paprfloor, Manyfolds UG and Nuventura. In addition to travel expenses, the start-ups will receive intensive pitch and PR training in advance and a supporting programme in California.

The candidates who have competed for Germany in recent years have been very successful internationally. The start-ups interpanel, Intrapore and INERATEC won in the categories “Scale Track” and “Growth Track”, the start-up Matteco achieved the 2nd place in the category “Seed Track”.