Deadline: 27th October 2023 | BNEF Pioneers Program For Addressing Net-Zero Challenges
| Title; | BNEF Pioneers Program For Addressing Net-Zero Challenges |
| Organisation: | BloombergNEF (BNEF) |
| Fund/Grant: | Be acknowledged as a BNEF Pioneer 2024, a trailblazing inventor with a good or service that can advance the low-carbon transition |
| Deadline: | 27th October 2023 |
| Eligible countries: | All |
For its Pioneers Programme, the BloombergNEF (BNEF) is inviting all early-stage businesses and creative projects to tackle net-zero challenges.
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Each year, the BNEF Pioneers programme has named a group of game-changing inventions or technologies that have the potential to hasten the global decarbonization process and halt climate change. Pioneers can be creators of new technologies for the energy, transportation, materials, industrial, consumer, and agricultural industries, or they can be suppliers of products and services that advance climate knowledge, scale carbon capture, utilisation, and store, and encourage climate adaptation.
The Pioneers Award will be given to innovators in 2024 who have developed scalable, significant, and equitable solutions to three global net-zero challenges.
In addition, independent of the specified challenges, BNEF will choose one or more wildcard winners. These “wildcard” applicants are open to tackling any problem that aids in combating climate change, and they welcome applications for all climate-tech solutions that do not directly address the three concerns listed below.
Challenges
- Despite the fact that they encourage submissions showcasing various varieties of climate-tech advances, they have selected three particular problems to concentrate on in 2024.
- Eliminating barriers in the deployment of clean energy is the first challenge.
- With the deployment of renewables, especially solar and wind, the electricity sector has a clear path towards decarbonization. Despite the fact that renewable energy is being used at record levels, to achieve net-zero emissions, yearly solar and wind installations must climb threefold by 2031 and sixfold by 2050. Costs are increasingly less of a barrier to deployment than are slow grid rollout, grid connection backlogs, difficult permitting processes, and supply chain bottlenecks. The top five European markets for renewable energy currently have a backlog of about 600 gigawatts of solar and wind projects, and the US has a backlog of more than 1,250 gigawatts. This Pioneers challenge seeks innovations, such as improved grid planning tools, brand-new grid equipment, or fresh approaches to labour and supply chain security.
- Challenge 2: Making building construction and operation carbon-free
- Buildings are responsible for 33% of worldwide CO2 emissions, but due to the slow adoption of important technology like heat pumps, the sector is not making much progress towards decarbonization. According to BNEF’s Net Zero Scenario, by 2050, cooling demand for residential buildings would have increased by 115%, while heating demand will have increased by more than twice as much. Buildings use 26% of the steel and 45% of the cement produced worldwide, accounting for the embodied emissions, and there are no commercial alternatives to their manufacturing at the moment. In order to decarbonize the embodied or operational emissions linked to buildings, this Pioneers challenge is searching for technologies that address any challenges. New heat pumps, new building materials, new building designs, platforms for expediting the deployment of clean thermal conditioning systems, and demand-side innovations are a few examples of what this might include.
- The third challenge is coming up with new net-zero fuels.
- 7% of CO2 emissions are caused by the fuel used by long-distance trucks, ships, and aeroplanes. Heavy-duty transportation needs an energy-dense liquid or gaseous fuel, but other modes of transportation, like passenger vehicles, are on track to electrify. The performance, scalability, affordability, sustainability, and land utilisation must all be adequate for next-generation fuels. To address these demands, ‘drop-in’ non-food feedstock biofuels, synthetic fuels, and others are developing. This Pioneers challenge seeks clean fuel ideas that increase the variety of accessible feedstock, lower costs, enhance supply chains, and allay concerns about sustainability and land use.
Wildcards
- They choose a group of Pioneers who are wildcards after these first three trials. In addition to the three challenges mentioned above, they encouraged applications for all climate-tech solutions, and they chose entries that addressed a variety of problems that will aid in global decarbonization.
Benefits
- The following benefits accrue to successful BNEF Pioneers:
- Be acknowledged as a BNEF Pioneer 2024, a trailblazing inventor with a good or service that can advance the low-carbon transition.
- Access the BNEF Web product and all insights for a full year.
- Become a member of the elite Pioneer alumni community.
- Get the chance to participate in startup pitching events hosted by BNEF, visit the six global BNEF Summits, and have the opportunity to speak there.
- Participate in BNEF research, reports, and videos.
What are they trying to find?
- Three main factors are considered when evaluating applicants:
- possible effect
- How big is the opportunity that’s being dealt with? How well does this approach deal with the net-zero challenge? Can you estimate how much greenhouse gas your technology could cut out? Is your company confined to a single geographic market, or is it expandable? Will it produce a whole ecology of brand-new auxiliary businesses? Could the technology have unintended negative effects as it grows?
- Innovation
- How novel is your business concept or technology? Is it a revolutionary change from what others are doing, or is it something entirely new? Is it demonstrated through a patent or another way? Exist any obstacles to its adoption or success, and if so, can they be removed? Exist any complementing laws or monetary arrangements?
Probability of adoption
- How quickly could your innovation grow?
- What clients, investors, and partnerships do you have?
- How do you intend to sell your product?
- What is the competitiveness of your prices?
- What would the cost of carbon be?
- Can your technology or company plan get the required quantity of funding?
eligibility requirements
Any of the following are eligible to apply:
- Climate-tech startups, which might be for-profit or nonprofit, private or public, or subsidiaries.
- Joint ventures and pilot projects: Any creative joint ventures and pilot initiatives tackling net-zero difficulties.
- NGOs, university or government-sponsored labs, and any other innovation community developing net-zero goods or technology with commercial applications.
For more information, visit BloombergNEF (BNEF) .
