Bringing Innovation to the forefront: Workshop for Cleantech SMEs by WWF-India and SICCI
Posted on: 27/Feb/2018 10:15:12 AM
WWF-India, in partnership with The Southern India Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SICCI) along with TiE Chennai as a supporting partner, organized a regional workshop on “Climate Solver+: Fostering Cleantech Innovation in SME sector in India” in Chennai on 23 February 2018.
This is the first among the series of regional workshops this year, reaching out to cleantech entrepreneurs working on sustainable energy solutions. The workshop included key representation from government, venture capitalists, incubation centres, SMEs, universities, financial institutions, industry associations and other ecosystem stakeholders from the southern region.
WWF’s Climate Solver platform recognizes Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), whose innovative technologies significantly reduce carbon-dioxide emissions or provide improved energy access to rural or urban poor. Over the last five years, the India chapter of this platform has recognized 17 promising innovators and conferred the Climate Solver award to them.
Launched since last year, as part of the expanded Climate Solver initiative, Climate Solver+ envisages to further enhance the reach and scope through regional platforms and build on the successes of the Climate Solver initiative in India to scale climate innovation among SMEs by growing the pool of clean energy innovators, providing a select group of innovators with business and financial planning, and building a community of clean energy innovation practice.
Mr. S Raghavan, Secretary, The Southern India Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SICCI) remarked, “SICCI has initiated a cleantech initiative under the brand ‘Footprint’ that has been developed in order to share best practices to reduce carbon footprint. The expert committee under this includes professionals from both industry and academia who are taking initiatives in promoting green energy as well as zero liquid discharge. In this process the chamber has invited leaders from various industries to share their experiences as well as their innovations and how they have benefitted from implementing these. We believe that this will be a learning experience to others, particularly the MSME industries and further accelerate cleantech innovation.”
Holistically analysing the clean technology innovation landscape in India, Dr T.S.Panwar, Director, Climate Change & Energy, WWF-India, emphasized on the potential of cleantech innovations to improve efficiency, competitiveness and environmental benefits- both in terms of greenhouse gas reduction and local environmental benefits and highlighted the role of the Climate Solver platform in facilitating global outreach and networking amongst the various orchestrators in the innovation space.
Mr. Raj Cherubal, CEO, Chennai Smart City Limited, in his special address talked about the importance of adopting clean technologies and gave an overview of how sustainable practices & cleantech initiatives are being planned and undertaken in Chennai in the areas of water & waste management, transport, parking management, renewable energy and deployment of smart grids. He further added that Chennai Smart City Limited is also engaged with third party agencies to benchmark the footprint, GHG emissions as well as resilience and, endeavors to come up with more such concrete projects in order to make Chennai smsmarter and greener.
