EIT Climate-KIC Germany, Austria & Switzerland

EIT Climate-KIC Germany, Austria, Switzerland is a branch of a knowledge and innovation community established by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) in 2010.

Our purpose is to tackle climate change through innovation. We are Europe’s largest public-private partnership with this purpose – a growing pan-European community of diverse organisations united by a commitment to direct the power of creativity and human ingenuity at the climate change challenge. We bring together large and small companies, scientific institutions and universities, city authorities and other public bodies, start-ups, and students.

With more than 450 formal organisational partners from over 30 countries, we work on innovation to mitigate climate change and to adapt to its unavoidable impacts. Our mission is to catalyse systemic change through innovation in areas of human activity that have a critical impact on greenhouse gas emissions – cities, land use, materials and finance – and to create climate-resilient communities.

Our Theory of Change is focused on empowering people to change systems – through exploration, experimentation and demonstration – to enable viable alternatives at scale. Why? Our generation faces the challenge of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions to zero within the next 20–30 years by changing almost every aspect of the ways humans currently live, work and play to avert catastrophic global temperature rise. Meeting that challenge requires transformation, by which we mean radical changes happening simultaneously, holistically and faster than we have ever experienced change before.

Focus on Deep Demonstrations

Our so-called “Deep Demonstrations” are the large-scale projects through which we offer our ‘systems innovation as a service’ model to Europe’s most ambitious ‘challenge owners’ – i.e. the mayors, government ministries, industries and community leaders, and funders who have the means and mandate to tackle Europe’s biggest climate change challenges.

Since 2019, EIT Climate-KIC’s eight Deep Demonstration projects act as:

• a testbed environment for the 1.5C-consistent systems transitions called for by the IPCC, European policymakers and our own Transformation, in Time strategy.
• sources of innovation and learning that can accelerate change elsewhere, and provide policy inputs.

More about Deep Demonstrations

Convening networks of expertise

We bring together partners in the worlds of business, academia, and the public and non-profit sectors to create networks of expertise, through which innovative products, services and systems can be developed, brought to market and scaled-up for impact. Through our convening power, EIT Climate-KIC brings together the most effective groups to create the innovation that can lead to systemic change.

Meet our partners in:

Germany Austria Switzerland

Leveraging grants smartly and effectively

We identify, source and place public and private funds that stimulate innovation. We track progress and outcomes and draw out learning and insight so that our funding partners can effectively invest their resources for maximum impact. By bringing together those with vision, with ideas, with low-carbon products and services, and with finance, we generate the critical mass needed to tackle climate change.

Current Calls

Developing people and capacity

EIT Climate-KIC Germany, Austria & Switzerland runs a range of inspirational education programmes across the region and online, for students, postgraduates and professionals. These programmes develop their participants’ skills and capacities, empowering them with up-to-date knowledge and best practice. In this way, we are fostering a new generation of entrepreneurs and climate leaders to realise a zero-carbon economy.

Our Education Programmes

Europe’s leading accelerator for cleantech startups

Since 2010 EIT Climate-KIC has supported over 1,800 climate-friendly startups throughout Europe. Successful companies such as lilium aviation, tado, refurbed or Climeworks show the significance of green startups from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Teams from these regions have successfully managed to secure almost half a billion Euro of follow-on funding after the programme. Find out more about the EIT Climate-KIC accelerator programme at climaccelerator.climate-kic.org. 

Our Entrepreneurship Programmes