Valencia City Council will award 100,000 euros for the best innovation project to achieve the València Neutral City mission

• An international call has been launched for projects aimed at the Valencia Neutral City mission and to which the 100,000 euros that Valencia won last year will be allocated for being among the 6 finalist cities in the European Capital of Innovation.
• The bases of the call and how to present the applications can be found here.
• Lanzadera and World Design Capital Valencia 2022 collaborate in this international call.

Valencia City Council, through the València Clima i Energia foundation and Las Naves innovation center, launched an international call this morning to find the project that best impacts the Valencia Neutral City innovation mission, the first of the Missions strategy Valencia 2030.

Last June 9th, València publicly presented the first Valencia Neutral City mission in a ceremony in Las Naves, within the innovation strategy Missions València 2030. A mission that seeks to have 3 climate-neutral neighborhoods or towns before 2030 by and for the citizens, as the European Commission will propose at the end of 2021 in its search for 100 European cities willing to accept the challenge of the transition towards decarbonisation.

Through València Clima i Energia, the innovation center Las Naves of the Valencia City Council, and the rest of the Services and entities of the Valencia City Council involved, the city will promote and deploy, together with the other 4 innovation helix, the work necessary to apply as a candidate to be one of the hundred cities selected within the European mission ‘100 neutral European cities before 2030 by (and for) citizens’, as approved by the Plenary of the Valencia City Council on February 25th with the support of the municipal government (Compromís-PSPV), and by the opposition, PP and Ciudadanos .

The Valencia City of Innovation Award of €100,000, whose call opens on July 1st, comes from the recognition that the European Commission gave the city of Valencia in 2020 for being one of the 6 best innovative European cities thanks to its Missions strategy València 2030. Those €100,000 will go to the best innovation project to be presented in the city of Valencia and which can show the greatest impact on the climate mission.

The call has an international scope, with which projects from all over Europe that meet the requirements can be presented. In addition, to reinforce this international character, the City Council will have the collaboration of entities such as World Design Capital Valencia 2022, an ambassador organization for Missions València 2030, and the Valencian business accelerator Lanzadera.

The Councillor for Climatic Emergence and Energy Transition of the Valencia City Council, Alejandro Ramon, has highlighted “the figure of the innovative ecosystem as an essential agent of change in the energy transition of the city towards the social, renewable, efficient and decarbonised energy model that the one that the council adheres to. The city already has innovative actions implemented in the fight against climate change, such as the Office of Energy, the development of local energy communities, the 50/50 projects or the Energy Transition Table that demonstrate how it moves from innovation to city policies in the field of energy ”.

The way of performing innovation at Las Naves, the Valencia City Council’s Innovation Center, follows the model of the quadruple helix that encourages creativity, participation and collaborative work of the entire innovative ecosystem in the city from the private sector, from public administrations and their instrumental entities, universities and their research centers and associated technological institutes and civil society. To these 4 helix we add a fifth one, the media, for the importance and value they have in the expansion of messages in society.

Carlos Galiana, Councillor for Innovation and Knowledge Management of the Valencia City Council, has insisted that “innovation is a collective journey rather than an individual destination. That is why this award is a call to action and collaborative work to the entire Valencian, national, European and international innovation ecosystem with only one condition: that the innovation proposed to decarbonize occurs in Valencia. That is to say, they will be able to present projects individually, but it will be valued that alliances are proposed with various organizations involved in the different helix ”.

The Valencia City Council seeks to reward the best innovation project that crosses and combines disciplines from any field, sector, activity, source of knowledge, technology or propellers of the innovation ecosystem and that shows a greater and broader impact on the Valencia Neutral City.

The proposed projects must have a clear innovative character, promoting changes of model and habits towards others that are more sustainable, healthy, productive, efficient and socially just in the challenge posed by the Valencia Neutral City mission.

A technical evaluation committee will evaluate the proposed projects with 3 main criteria: the potential impact on the Mission Valencia Neutral City, that is, on its objective of decarbonizing neighborhoods or towns in Valencia; the additional investment and potential impact on employment; and the social involvement and mobilization of the ecosystem.

The presentation of candidatures will be from July 1st to September 15th. And the announcement of the winning innovation project will be made the second half of November. The entity or entities promoting innovation will have an implementation period of 18 months from the allocation of the award.

Missions Valencia 2030

The objective of Missions València 2030 is to guide the research and innovation efforts of the entire ecosystem to achieve a healthier, more sustainable, more shared and more entrepreneurial city and to do so through innovation missions that challenge the talent and knowledge of our society.

Missions València 2030 was recognized in September 2020 by the European Commission as one of the six best innovation initiatives in European cities within its annual European Capital of Innovation 2020 competition (iCapitalAwards 2020) and awarded €100,000.