Energy Enterprise Generation in the Med Area
ENERGEIA tackles the topic of supporting entrepreneurship in the energy sector. Developing entrepreneurship out of research outputs and competences is a key action that will contribute to reach Europe2020 objectives - in terms of energy consumption from renewable sources and energy savings - direct impacts on EU economic development, wealth creation and employment. Data on the energy sector in Europe show the central role it plays in the EU economy in terms of current size and growth potential in the medium term, demand for technology and innovative solutions is growing especially because of existing regulations at EU levels and also because of society general interest for environment low impact solutions. In order to be able to further develop the offer for new technologies and innovative solutions, it is necessary to build an entrepreneurship friendly environment, able to recognize and then fulfill the expectations of the energy sector. This assumption, shared by the consortium, is at the basis of the ENERGEIA project, which aims is to design a friendly environment for entrepreneurship in the renewable energy sector in the Mediterranean area. ENERGEIA partners are eight organizations with relevant experience in designing and implementing policies in entrepreneurship development and promotion of the energy sector. Most of them also directly provide support and advice to innovative start-ups generated from research institutions. ENERGEIA will enable to develop concrete tools ready to meet the challenge of supporting nascent business in the renewable energy sector. Starting from the outputs collected from partners in their past experiences, the project will carry on research, networking and pilot actions on the main fields of interest for the energy renewable sector in the MED regions. The first step of the project will be to define the -energy filiere-�, according to common guidelines, that will allow partners build up a cooperation network and a favourable environment for the development of new entrepreneurship. All actors will be mapped and the most relevant good practices will be shared within and outside the consortium. Transnational working groups will be set to tackle relevant transversal issues and training sessions and dissemination events will be organized. Finally, the knowledge acquired during the previous project phases will be mainstreamed into two pilot actions, dedicated to (1) reinforcing the business support operators capacities in matching the specific needs of start-ups and (2) the development of a path to fully exploit business projects in the energy field. The communication and dissemination activity plays a major role in the project: beside the events organisation and the spreading of information through institutional and informal communication channels, the support of several members of relevant European Networks (as EEN and Eurada) will ensure a wide and continuous diffusion of the project's outcomes.