GreenEvo – Technology Accelerator for green tech “Made in Poland”

The challenge

Despite the rich variety of support instruments offered by the Polish public authorities, entrepreneurs do not make use of all opportunities due to bureaucratic burdens.

Moreover, companies participating in GreenEvo have pointed out that many foreign buyers do not yet fully trust technically advanced green solutions originating from Poland. The Environment Ministry attempts to change this by building the GreenEvo brand as a sort of guarantee for the quality of the green technologies “Made in Poland” on international markets.

The measure

GreenEnvo’s objective is to facilitate access to foreign markets and to find appropriate co-financing sources for projects. GreenEvo provides support to the innovation competences of firms in six environmental fields. These are renewable energy sources, air protection, energy efficiency (incl. sustainable construction), waste management, protection of biodiversity, water and wastewater treatment. They either help restore the natural state of the environment or to limit environmental impact of human activities, including greenhouse gas emissions.

GreenEvo provides support to the companies that win the competition each year. This includes:

Marketing support: Assistance in the preparation of company promotional materials, training courses on product presentation, strategic planning, business plan preparation, project participation or patent or IPR protection;Supporting commercial missions abroad, and organisational support for participation to international exhibitions;Providing and promoting market intelligence in foreign markets;.Providing support in identifying relevant sources of co-financing, also from foreign sources.

Lessons learnt

During the last five editions of the programme between 2010-2014, 62 companies were chosen as winners.

The results of GreenEvo’s annual evaluation show the remarkable success of Polish green technology providers – exports and foreign sales of GreenEvo winners increased by more than 50%, while their turnover grew on average by 36%. Almost 40% of the winners created new green jobs. Nonetheless, employing new workers have not impeded their R&D projects: half of the winners invested in developing new technologies. At the same time, 24 companies improved upon their already existing technologies. In addition, GreenEvo is enhancing the cooperation among its participating companies: 35% of the companies started business cooperation with other winners. Also, 25% of the winners have implemented joint projects with their customer firms. Overall, sales and employment numbers went up. Year after year, GreenEvo companies demonstrate the increasing capabilities of the Polish green-tech sector by being successful in the international markets, selling environmental technologies and creating new green jobs.

GreenEvo was awarded the European Award for Best Practice 2014 by the European Society for Quality Research (ESQR) in the category ‘Best Practices’.

Further deployment

GreenEvo is a supply side policy measure supporting eco-manufacturing and based on grant funding principles. It cannot run self-sufficiently; however, it can be mixed with other supply and demand-side policy measures. The concept can be easily transferred to other countries or regions, and be scaled up or down with regards the environmental areas or number of participants, eligibility criteria etc. It is hence estimated to be Beyond 9 on the GML scale.

Links

GreenEvo Winners 2010-2013: Success StoriesThe market for environmental technologies in Poland – Experiences of technology providers, lessons learned for public institutionsWebsiteVideos