European sustainable energy accelerator InnoEnergy has teamed up with trade association for business angels EBAN, forming a new entity EBAN Energy to drive more sustainable energy innovations to market.
The partnership will provide a networking platform for over 170 InnoEnergy’s sustainable energy start-ups and EBAN’s network of business angels to work together on alleviating common investment challenges, including long lead-time to market, capital-intensive nature of the industry and strict legislation.
This will provide InnoEnergy’s start-ups with direct access to funding, helping to reduce the time to commercialization, InnoEnergy said.
InnoEnergy and EBAN will also educate EBAN’s business angels to ensure better understanding of the complex regulatory challenges associated with the sustainable energy industry.
Elena Bou , Innovation Director at InnoEnergy, said: “There are challenges for start-ups in any industry, but sustainable energy innovators are faced with a much longer list of hurdles that can make it difficult to achieve market potential.
“Despite these challenges, sustainable energy has a huge impact on society, making it an attractive industry for the brightest entrepreneurs. The launch of EBAN Energy will enable us to provide further support to our high-potential start-ups, helping to drive them to commercialization.”
Candace Johnson , President of EBAN, added: “We want to democratize access to sustainable energy by investing in green assets and encouraging entrepreneurs and investors to be active in building sustainable and green development capital. And we want to inspire the global entrepreneur, innovation and early stage investment communities to develop sustainable and green capital.”
The collaboration was unveiled on Friday, June 9, 2017, by Diego Pavia, the CEO of InnoEnergy at the 2017 EBAN Annual Congress in Malaga, Spain.