European Institute of Innovation and Technology invests EUR 500 in the Knowledge and Innovation Communities

EIT RawMaterials receives an investment of EUR 81.7 million from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). This investment will drive European innovation in advanced and sustainable raw materials for Europe’s green energy transition.

In 2020, the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) will invest EUR 500 million in its Knowledge and Innovation Communities across Europe – the EIT Governing Board decided. This investment will drive European innovation in the areas of climate (EIT Climate-KIC), digitisation (EIT Digital), sustainable materials (EIT RawMaterials), renewable energies (EIT InnoEnergy), urban mobility (EIT Urban Mobility), food (EIT Food), health (EIT Health) and manufacturing (EIT Manufacturing).

The EIT’s eight Knowledge and Innovation Communities competed for EUR 500 million and were evaluated against their strategies and business plans for 2020, as well as their performance to date. Based on this, the EIT Governing Board decided to allocate the following grants:

The EIT Governing Board also decided to allocate EUR 30 million to the EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (EIT RIS) – the programme that helps modest and moderate regions (according to the European Innovation Scoreboard) to fully realise their innovation potential through the sharing of good practice and experience from across the EIT Community. The EIT RIS fund will be available to all EIT Innovation Communities that include EIT RIS eligible activities in their 2020 Business Plans. EIT RawMaterials is the leading Innovation Community in terms of RIS activities. Learn more about the projects driven by our Innovation Community.

Martin Kern, EIT Director, said: The EIT is now Europe’s proven innovation engine and 2020 will see strong impact from our eight Knowledge and Innovation Communities, based on their submitted plans. Our results clearly show that the EIT’s investment delivers and turns ground-breaking ideas into products and services for a greener, healthier, more sustainable Europe.

Investing in what works

The 2020 funding will step up activities for entrepreneurs, innovators, and students, including business creation and acceleration services, entrepreneurial educational programmes and innovation-driven research projects. These activities have been shown to work, delivering tangible impact for Europe. In 2020, the EIT Community plans to power 1000 start-ups and scale-ups and launch more than 360 new products and services to contribute to Europe’s efforts of tackling global challenges. More than 900 students are expected to graduate from EIT labelled master and doctoral programmes, strengthening the pool of talented and entrepreneurially-minded change agents eager to transform their best ideas into solutions for Europe. It is foreseen that in 2020 alone, ventures supported by the EIT Community will raise over EUR 400 million in external capital.

Since the EIT was set up in 2008, it has created Europe’s largest innovation community, with more than 1 000 partners and 50 innovation hubs. This has delivered support to more than 2 000 start-ups and scale-ups, created more than 6 100 jobs and more than 900 new products and services. More than 2200 students have graduated from EIT-labelled master and doctoral programmes. To date, EIT-supported ventures have raised more than EUR 1.5 billion in external capital.

For the last three years, EIT RawMaterials has contributed with the following key numbers.