Skip to main content

Evolution Energie winner of the Climate-KIC France start-up competition

Competing in the October 2nd final of the Climate-KIC France start-up competition in Paris, Evolution Energie won against YNsect, the laureate of the Cleantech Open France 2014.

The competition took place in Les Salons du Louvre – central Paris – in a casual but definitely competitive ambiance, and ended by a convivial cocktail. The event was attended by more than one hundred partners, investors, start-ups, corporates, students and Climate-KIC staff. Nathalie Croisé, a BFM Business TV journalist, specialist of “Sustainable growth”,and Jean-Christophe Duval, Entrepreneurship Lead Climate-KIC France animated the evening, with a speech by Thanh Tâm Lê, Director Climate-KIC, who awarded the prize to the winner, and Olivier Duverdier CEO of ECOSYS Group & CleanTech Open France who awarded the prize to the Challenger.

The Jury was composed of the most important venture capitalists and business angels in cleantech in France such as Demeter, Emertec, Aster, Sofinova Partners and Corporate Investment of Climate KIC Partner GDF Suez.

The laureates from previous years – Open Ocean, Cybeletech and AirInov – were also in attendance, and were invited to present an update regarding their start-up and career development since their individual wins.

After presentation of the Climate-KIC entrepreneurship mission and achievements, the start-ups first introduced themselves through professional filmed reports featuring their activities, products and teams, followed by their pitch presentation to the jury and audience.

This event was one of the first to shape the multi-annual agreement signed with ECOSYS Group – a growth accelerator for eco-innovative companies – to select and accelerate every year the eight climate laureates of the Clean Tech Open.

Start-ups

Ynsect – 2 billion people on earth eat insects, which are rich in protein. One might give up on the non-climate friendly meat and favors snacks made with insect powder. Skeptical? Today the start-up Ynsect already provides insects products used to make pet food, plastics and fertilizers. Ynsect mission is to design, build and operate industrial facilities called insect biorefineries. This start-up aims to bring the potential of insect products and services to a wide range of industries.

The first generation of their biorefineries creates high value products for animal feed, especially for aquaculture.

Evolution Energie - Energy efficiency is key to industry in terms of cost savings but also because of CSR reporting policies. The efficiency of the Energy evolution software and the outstanding performances of this start-up since their creation in 2010 (large corporate clients such as Arcelor, global activities, a 10 million order book…) largely convinced the jury. Evolution Energie offers energy efficiency softwares. Industry uses 40% of the global energy and needs to know its consumption over multiple sites, to reduce costs and improve competitiveness.

Evolution Energie innovation consists in its capacity to match expectations, to monitor expenses and to optimize them. Energy efficiency is then implemented via reduced energy consumption and CO2 emissions control. The start-up currently manages 4% of European energy consumption (gaz and electricity), that is 200 TWh / 5000 TWh.

Evolution Energie is part of the Climate-KIC acceleration programme which Ynsect will enter soon after both competitors are invited to the European Climate KIC Competition in Valencia, in late October.