The Ministry of SMEs and Startups will nurture climate tech startups holding innovative technologies in areas such as carbon neutrality and energy transition. The ministry plans to facilitate open innovation and funding support between these startups and public institutions and large corporations, including Korea Water Resources Corporation and Hyundai Engineering & Construction (000720).
The ministry said Sunday that it is recruiting startups to participate in "Everyone's Challenge Climate Tech," a public-private partnership open innovation program that solves the demand-side tasks of large corporations and public institutions together with innovative startups. Applications will be accepted from June 16 to July 10. Eligible applicants are startups in the climate tech sector with seven years or less of business operations.
Everyone's Challenge is a program that supports open innovation, including technology demonstration and market entry, between startups in new industry sectors and demand firms in each field. It is currently underway across sectors such as AX (AI transformation), robotics, and defense.
This challenge involves five public institutions under the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, including Korea Water Resources Corporation and Korea Electric Power Corporation, along with three large corporations including Hyundai Engineering & Construction and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (329180), participating as demand firms. These demand firms have presented collaboration tasks in the climate tech sector, including carbon neutrality, energy transition, and eco-friendly energy technologies.
The collaboration tasks reflect actual on-site demand. The fields and technologies vary widely, including autonomous inspection of solar power generation facilities using drones and artificial intelligence (AI), real-time algae bloom detection, and real-time management of carbon emissions at shipyards. Startups can select and apply for desired tasks based on their technologies and business models.
Selected startups will pursue technology verification, prototype production, and on-site applicability reviews together with demand firms, and will receive up to 140 million won in commercialization funding per task. In particular, officials from demand firms will participate directly as evaluation committee members to select startups with high potential for actual collaboration.
"Climate tech is a field that determines future industrial competitiveness in areas such as carbon neutrality and energy transition, and public-private cooperation is very important," said Cho Kyung-won, the ministry's startup policy director. "Through this Everyone's Challenge, we will effectively connect the on-site demand of large corporations and public institutions with the innovative technologies of startups, and actively support the growth of climate tech startups and the creation of win-win cooperation outcomes."
