Apr 29, 2024

By translating member commitments into the world’s largest, credible demand signal for emerging climate technologies, FMC is accelerating the adoption of these technologies to decarbonise the world’s heavy-emitting sectors.  

In practice, this often means FMC members have to look beyond their traditional supplier base and seek new solutions and providers – including Climatetech start-ups and SMEs.   

This is where the European Innovation Council (EIC) comes in. The European Innovation Council (EIC) was established under the EU Horizon programme, with a budget of €10.1 billion to support game-changing innovations throughout their lifecycle – from early-stage research to proof of concept, technology transfer, and the financing and scale-up of startups and SMEs. A strategic partnership was thus established between the FMC and the EIC – to connect FMC’s aggregated demand with innovative suppliers identified through the EIC program.  

As a part this strategic collaboration, FMC and the EIC co-hosted a pitching event during the EIC Summit 2024 on 19 March. The event featured EIC beneficiaries as well as innovative procurers and investors from FMC in the areas of Green Hydrogen, Alternative Chemicals and Fuels, CCUS and CDR.  

“By bringing these innovative climate technology providers together with FMC members seeking to meet their commitments, FMC is taking a further step in helping to equip members and the wider industry ecosystem with the tools needed to turn commitments into action,” said Rob Johan Adriaan van Riet, Interim Head of the First Movers Coalition. “These technologies need maximum visibility and exposure to potential buyers so that we can build early market momentum for decarbonized solutions – underscoring the value of FMC’s collaboration with EIC as a vehicle for that exposure.” 

The four FMC on-stage members (Boeing, Constellium, SSAB and Salesforce) and an FMC implementation partner (Breakthrough Energy) handpicked five EIC awardees who were invited to pitch their innovations during the event, out of a total of 13 EIC beneficiaries who expressed interest in coming to Brussels to pitch to FMC. The selected group of awardees – eChemicles, GAFT, Sakowin Green Energy, ANEMEL and Reverion – demonstrated during the live session how their breakthrough solutions could help to tackle industry decarbonisation challenges. 

“This pitching event is a crucial step in not only surfacing the latest breakthrough near zero-emission solutions coming to market, but also offered an opportunity to consider the barriers to large-scale procurement of these solutions – which are often at early stages of development from SMEs and start-ups," said Mandy Chan, Procurement Specialist, First Movers Coalition. “We look forward to continuing to work with EIC to address these barriers and diversify the procurement of industrial decarbonization technologies among FMC members and beyond.” 

“The EIC Business Acceleration Services (BAS) Innovation Procurement Program supports the access of the EIC top notch innovators to procurement markets in Europe, but also to global markets,” said Dr. Jur. Vasileios Tsanidis, Innovation Procurement Advisor, European Innovation Council. “FMC members are committed to ambitious decarbonization goals that can only be achieved through adopting new technologies and breakthrough solutions. The matchmaking, that took place during the EIC Summit in Brussels on 19 March 2024, showed the importance of the engagement of the demand side with key innovators, especially in the context of Innovation Procurement. For that reason, the EIC collaboration with FMC and FMC members has a strategic meaning, aiming at contributing to the achievement of decarbonization goals and commitments of leading companies worldwide. We are looking forward to the next steps of this collaboration.”