With the European AI & Climate Landscape 2020, the European Applied AI Alliance is embarking on its first initiative to identify European champions of AI for Environment.

The landscape is a contribution to the Agenda of the European Commission both on the side of the Green Deal and Europe’s Digital Decade program. It aims to:

• Highlight promising AI startups with high technical and environmental value,
• Enable connections between champions to create new partnerships,
• Scale up global AI leaders for Environment.

It also is aligned with the national Agenda of Germany and France and many other EU members towards a close integration and interaction of both environmental and digital policies developed by the public authorities.

The goal of the landscape is to give companies guidance and promising startups a visible platform, benefiting both parties and driving the adoption of AI to tackle the challenges of Climate change.

Following the initial launch of the landscape, which includes startups from Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Denmark, other European AI initiatives will be asked to participate in order to grow the landscape to include startups from even more countries.

From the methodological point of view, the objective is to put to the fore the best European startups putting AI at the service of the environment by insisting on two criteria: technological excellence and environmental commitment.

The selection has been assessed according to both criteria by experts from our ecosystems.

This mapping is a work in progress which will be updated regularly by integrating new European AI champions acting for climate. We remain open to any feedback or contribution.

Regarding environmental impact, we wish to highlight startups that provide real environmental added value. We support startups that place environmental protection at the heart of their business model and ensure that the benefits brought by their technologies are not cancelled out by an intensification of uses, so called rebound effects. This is all the more important since AI naturally carries a rebound effect through resource consumption due to electronic devices and data processing

As for Artificial Intelligence, we target startups for their technological excellence in the field of AI, featuring search for innovative machine learning algorithms.

The startups have been categorized in six main fields of applications: agriculture & ecosystems, industry, mobility, circular economy, energy, buildings & cities.

These categories can also be adapted with the inclusion of new startups.

In the objective to foster and accelerate AI in Europe, FCAI (Finland) is one of the founding members of an alliance including DTI (Denmark), Hub France IA (France), SINTEF and OpenAILab (Norway), appliedAI and Fortiss (Germany), with a cooperation agreement signed in München on November, 29th 2018 with the intention to create the “European Applied AI” hub (namely “European Applied AI” or “the alliance”).

They all play an active role in their national AI strategy, share interest and intention to build a strong European AI ecosystem. All focus on the application of AI and the innovation ecosystem around it. All believe in a European impact through variety, resilience, diversity, and robustness of AI solutions.The Founding Members believe that to invest, develop and actively participate in the development of the AI industry, the promotion and cooperation between European members is now a priority.

The mission of the Alliance is to build a European Applied AI ecosystem and support the creation of new European AI champions globally.