The finalists for the 2021 Climate LaunchPad competition are officially set to square off on 8th September 2021 for the top three positions in this year’s contest. The contestants will compete on a virtual platform hosted via Zoom by Kenya Climate Innovation Center (KCIC) where guests can register to participate via CLP Kenya Nationals. The finals will also be aired on the official KCIC YouTube and Facebook channels.
The Climate Launchpad competition is a global platform for transforming promising ideas that address climate change into impactful businesses. The challenge, supported by EIT Climate-KIC and TU Delft, and run locally by the KCIC, helps aspiring entrepreneurs grow their cleantech ideas into global businesses.
“For the sixth straight year, we are thankful to our great partners for putting together this amazing opportunity to let the top climate change innovators from across the country compete on the highest stage,” Dr. Edward Mungai, KCIC CEO says. “On behalf of CLP International, we congratulate all of the competitors and look forward to welcoming these 16 great innovations to tackle the most pressing climate issues of our time.”
Climate Launchpad works together with Climate-KIC, creating opportunities for innovators to address climate change and shape the world’s next economy. Ideas presented during the competition are capable of accelerating innovation that enables a low-carbon future.
Participating in this year’s event, after winning their respective regional finals, will be:
Food Systems
Solar Cold Chain
In the effort to reduce post-harvest loss and retain food nutrients, solar cold chain allows farmers and market vendors to increase fruits and vegetables lifespan. The cold chain system will operate off-grid, solar PV powered cold rooms for smallholder farmers, agriculture product aggregators and retailers among others. The solar cool storage facility preserves food by increasing lifespan and retaining nutrients.
Drip Masters East Africa
Mimea Agtech uses data from soil monitors placed in the farm to give the farmers precise irrigation timing guidelines and advice on how long to irrigate and with how many litres of water. The goal of the enterprise is to save water, energy and time.
AgroTech+
AgroTech+ is an all-encompassing ag-tech feature such as ICT, IoT, Big-Data, e-Commerce, and m-Commerce with an intent to to provide smart farming solutions. The innovation focuses on precision and predictive agriculture while building a strong agri-ecosystem for the benefit of farmers and making healthy soil and happy farmers with better returns on the investment. The enterprise hopes to work with youths and women smallholder farmers to provide extension service linkages – micro lending, digital payments, climate change information and updates, digital payments – and market access to both local and international partners through a digital platform.
Chicken Masters Organics
The innovation is called WiFi Based Smart Irrigation System that connects multiple key smart devices wirelessly. These smart devices are involved in farm irrigation, working together simultaneously using logarithms to analyze abiotic factors to determine the precise volume of water needed by plants provided there is internet connection. The device provides the farmer with real-time data of regulating water used by their crops directly on their smartphone app. These smart devices include; smart irrigation controller, smart flow meter, smart water valve and smart soil moisture sensor.
Urban Solutions
Zero Carbon Wall Cladding Board
The Zero-Carbon-Wall-Cladding boards are a photosynthetic building cladding system which uses solar energy to remove carbon dioxide and pollutants from the atmosphere. They produce a valuable food resource in the form of algae therefore converting the buildings into bio-power plants, carbon sinks and air pollution filters.
Ikoaqua Enterprise
The enterprise installs self-service and automatic water refill stations in residential apartment blocks to enable and encourage a refilling culture. This is in a bid to reduce single use plastic pollution.
Wable Maji Safi Solutions
The M-Safi management hub is a virtual water ATM designed as a stand-alone pay and go using sim application (any phone with M-Pesa) enhancing the provision of clean and safe drinking water in decentralized community water points.
Thin Tech
The idea proposes to innovate and produce VCS Virtual remote working stations to replace ordinary CPU computers that use more energy, electricity, produce more carbon emissions and are hard to dispose or recycle.
Circular Economy
Inno Neat Limited
The group assembles solar ready repurposed lithium ion batteries from used Lithium battery cells for use in solar applications for low income communities and e-mobility applications.
Trendy bags & Mats
Trendy bags & mats is a new and innovative social business venture that uses banana trunks waste that was previously discarded to craft eco-friendly products like bags and mats. It is a circular, cost effective waste management solution that offers a shift towards a low carbon circular economy eliminating waste and utilizing existing resources.
Nyungu Africa
The idea involves creating innovative menstrual products from underutilized agricultural waste; pineapple leaves and corn husks. The fibers are waste free and affordable.
Clean Energy
Community Shelter Works Limited
Community Shelter Works Ltd has invented a “fuel-less generator” which is affordable, reliable, and portable. It is battery operated; the batteries deliver direct current (DC) to Inverter which converts it into alternate current (AC) to drive a motor which drives a flywheel. The flywheel is leveraged to deliver kinetic energy to rotate a Generator, continuously charging the batteries, and powering other industrial applications.
Drop Access
Efficient Cooling (E-Cool) is the local manufacturing of portable solar-powered fridges for use in the healthcare industry as well as food storage. Besides production, Drop Access has coupled the fridges with an online application for remote monitoring and sensing, online troubleshooting and data collection. The business is committed to provide a practical and affordable cold chain to low-income communities coupled with a comprehensive and reliable after-sale battery storage support system.
Clean Energy 4 Food Security
The innovation proposes the development of compressed air energy, free air battery (FAB) storage technologies. FAB is cost-effective and robust, made from mature industrial components, that can hold & discharge energy over extended periods (10 hours +), and can operate in extreme conditions without performance loss. FAB is non-polluting, made of 95% metal components, easily recycled after a 30-year operating life.
CelluBioClag Distillers Ltd
An innovation for biofuel production from a wild cellulosic perennial plant feedstock. It uses a cellulosic biomass non-food raw material as opposed to the human food stuff used by the current ethanol producers. Thus, significantly increase the amount and efficiency of biofuel sustainably. It also demonstrates the value of the wild plant farming development to restore degraded and marginal lands unsuited for food crops contributing to the 10% world forest requirements.
Circular economy
Kingdom ClothesLine & Eco- Textile
The World Resources Institute estimates that the so-called “fast fashion” industry annually releases about 1.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Kingdom Clothesline & Eco Textile propose to use technology driven approaches to produce sustainable and environmentally friendly fabric.
Winners will be invited to pitch their ideas at the African regional finals. Only three innovations will advance from this National final to the African regionals. There are also cash prizes for the top three winners to help the most viable scale their businesses up.
To learn more about the Climate LaunchPad competition, including how to get involved in the future, visit https://climatelaunchpad.org/climatelaunchpad/.
