As part of the event and to highlight Sweden’s great innovation and entrepreneurship landscape, EIT InnoEnergy organises together with the Swedish Energy Agency and Ignite Sweden, the Innovation Race – a pitch competition for startups. The competition focused this year on “innovative solutions and business models that can be implemented in the energy system with direct effect”.

We are very happy to announce that three of EIT InnoEnergy’s supported start-ups made it to the Top 5 finalists – Graphmatech, Rivus Batteries and Nordluft Automation – and that Graphmatech is the winner of the contest. A big congratulation to them!

Graphmatech manufactures Aros Graphene®, a unique graphene hybrid material capable of unlocking the full potential of graphene. With its highly conductive properties, the material will enable to replace highly demanded metals worldwide such as copper and aluminium. For this innovative solution, Graphmatech is rewarded with 100,000 SEK in prize money.

“This year’s Innovation Race winner is Graphmatech, a player that in an increasingly electrified world has great potential to sustainably and energy-efficiently bridge the need for minerals”, says Robert Andrén, chairman of the jury and DG at the Swedish Energy Agency.

Rivus, which produces sustainable flow batteries, reaches the second position and wins 50,000 SEK. Rebase Energy, that optimizes distributed and complex energy systems, comes in third place and wins 25,000 SEK.

“Congratulations to all three companies for their innovative solutions and contribution to building the sustainable energy systems of the future, and in particular Graphmatech and Rivus, which are two of the companies that we at EIT InnoEnergy support in their journey,” says Johan Söderbom, Thematic Leader for Smart Grids and Energy Storage at EIT InnoEnergy.

In addition to the respective winners of the pitch competition, LocalLife was awarded a commercialisation prize and will carry out a pilot project with one of Ignite Sweden’s members.