INSME is partner of XPRESS (Support for Public Procurements to facilitate the collaboration between SMEs and public sector for the development and adoption in renewables in regions), a project funded under the EU Horizon 2020 programme and coordinated by APRE – the Agency for the Promotion of European Research.
With a total budget of 3 Million Euros the project will aim to facilitate the introduction of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in specific cities and municipalities within the UK, Italy, Norway, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Slovakia, Portugal and Belgium with the perspective to enlarge RES solutions to other countries.
XPRESS focuses on Green Public Procurment (GPP) procedures to join forces with the public sector. The transition towards sustainable solutions assumes high risk innovations along with additional funds, unlikely raised by the private sector on its own. Banks and other financial entities tend to hesitate to supply funds for RES as the probability of survival of innovative SMEs is uncertain.
The XPRESS project aims to help stimulate constructive dialogue between the public and private sectors, evaluating the impact of GPPs and other strategies on the probability of SMEs to survive the so-called “valley of death”.
The final and most important goal is to raise the share of renewable energy solutions in the final energy consumption.
To meet these challenges, XPRESS will create a web platform as a mean to raise interaction between public procurers, innovative SMEs and end users of green innovations; map the cities and municipalities’ low carbon energy needs with RES technology developed by innovative SMEs; improve the application of GPPs to innovative RES technologies; and lastly increase the awareness of innovative SMEs about RES technologies. By doing so, XPRESS will demonstrate the positive impact of innovative GPPs on cities, municipalities and SMEs in terms of energy saving, energy efficiency and low carbon emission.
INSME will contribute to the organization of events; the drafting of good practices case studies and identification of public procurement projects; the analysis of the data collected covering both the barriers to investments in innovation in RES and innovative SMEs.
Discover more about the XPRESS by visiting the project’s official webpage.
