On 6 March, the twenty winners of the What Design Can Do Clean Energy Challenge were announced, during a special edition of Stadsleven Amsterdam. In front of a packed house of climate experts, creatives and entrepreneurs, we awarded three projects for each of the five cities addressed in the Challenge, plus five commendations for ‘Moonshot’ ideas which appealed to the judge’s imaginations.
Today, we celebrate the winners selected for Amsterdam, a city which has struggled to reconcile its clean energy ambitions with its historic and aesthetic concerns. Can creatives help move this conversation forward? We certainly think so – and are excited to see how the winning projects will contribute to this effort. Our International Jury selected the following three teams for their innovative approach to creating new networks of sustainability in the city, and for their uncompromising eye for design.
THE WINNERS
BLOCK-E: RECHARGING A GREEN CURRENCY
BY TIES SCHOTEL, Annabella Rijksen, Anouk Snijders, Carlijn Bijlsma | WINNER STUDENT TRACK
Block-E is a product system that offers a new way to pay with clean energy. At the core of the system is a powerbank, that acts as a wallet and that can be charged while cycling. From there, energy can be transferred via the Dock: a payment system which allows you make transactions with your green currency.
COMMENTS FROM THE TEAM:
“Our team met at the Design Jam in Amsterdam, and we got our initial idea during the workshop: Block-e, a powerbank that you can charge by cycling. We believed in this idea and its potential to make clean energy the new currency.
Since we’ve been nominated, we’ve already learned a lot from the feedback from WDCD. We quickly went back to work mode; as designers we always want to improve our ideas. So we did: we talked to experts, thought about the whole ecosystem, redesigned the form and interaction of the product and made better visuals. Within a year we hope to have made some serious steps towards the production of our product. ”
COMMENTS FROM THE Jury:
This project seems really suitable for Amsterdam where so many people travel on bicycles. Generating energy while you’re already biking is a clever thought, but converting this energy into currency is an entirely new and intriguing idea. The design is well thought through: the power bank is very easily attached to the bike and paying via the docking station seems as easy. A promising idea.
BOAT BATTERY SWAP
BY JOB VELTMAN & VOLTOGO | WINNER STARTUP TRACK
Voltogo is a voltage-giver to use on the go! This universal battery for boats is high capacity and still portable. It enables boat users to switch to clean and silent electric boating, without the need for a charging point on their boat. To support this system and speed up transition, we are also working together with waterside cafés and businesses to develop the first battery sharing and swapping service in Amsterdam.
COMMENTS FROM THE TEAM:
“We’re really happy with the expert jury recognition that this big plan is the right thing to happen in Amsterdam in the short term. In one year, I’d like to see us having launched our first Amsterdam swapping stations, spread out intelligently, so we’ll be making Voltogo a real alternative of choice for at least 50% of the boating population in the city.”
COMMENTS FROM THE Jury:
A boat, a battery and a beer, what else do you need? This project appeals on a whole set of factors: it phases out fossil fuel, it cleans the waterways and in a city that attracts so many tourists, it has a symbolic meaning to the outside world. It is addressing mobility on water, and maybe even mobility in general. It is scalable and both the product and the design are well-made.
SOLAR VISUALS
BY ROGER TAN, UNSense & SOLAR VISUALS | WINNER STARTUP TRACK
Solar Visuals are high-tech photovoltaic panels which enables the application of solar power on a much larger scale; not only as a rooftop coverage, but as cladding material for the façades of buildings. At the same time, the technology is highly aesthetic: combining a revolutionary dot-pattern technique, to optimize energy output without compromising design value.
COMMENTS FROM THE TEAM:
“We think the Clean Energy challenge really fits with our project: using the power of design to make clean energy more beautiful and more acceptable and therefore implementable on a very large scale. In one year, we plan to have multiple live installations of the Solar Visuals product on buildings in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands and in Europe.”
COMMENTS FROM THE Jury:
For any historically protected structure these solar façade panels offer the opportunity to modernize and become a clean energy generator. And it doesn’t end with a simple façade only, but provides the opportunity to embellish buildings with an entire new kind of ornamentation. The path forward is endless as long as they have both the technological capacity and the design aesthetics to do it.
WHAT’S NEXT?
All twenty winners of the Challenge will now enter a dedicated accelerator to help develop their projects further. The 4-month program includes a production budget and expert mentorship, and is designed to give each finalist the tools they need to make their innovation ready for market and financing.
Visit our platform for more information about the timeline, and to view all the submissions in our project gallery. In the coming weeks, we’ll highlight more winners for each city right here on the blog, as well as on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.