The competition is for entrepreneurs and students to put forward their cleantech business ideas. The 10 successful applicants from the UK will be invited to take part in a two-day business bootcamp, a series of workshops, before being narrowed down to three finalists who will then be invited to Estonia in October 2015 for the ClimateLaunchpad European final. The winner and two runners up will receive cash prizes totalling €17,500.

ClimateLaunchpad is Europe’s largest cleantech business idea competition. The UK (minus Scotland) is one of 25 countries taking part, along with Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and Scotland. The top eight finalists in the Europe-wide competition will be given a place on Climate-KIC’s flagship Accelerator programme, which offers grants of up to €20,000 to the most promising start-ups; enabling them to bring their low carbon products/services to market in an accelerated timescale.

Claire Spencer, Project Officer for Climate-KIC said: “We are now into our third year of ClimateLaunchpad and the quality has been consistently high. In the UK, our regional and national economies will succeed as low carbon businesses do, and we are really keen to encourage anyone who thinks they could be part of that future to have a go at ClimateLaunchpad. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain”.