The European Innovation Procurement Awards (EUIPA) 2024-25: the winners

Winner: Camera Car, Czechia

Camera Car, Revolutionising Parking Zone Monitoring in Prague.
In 2022, Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, introduced an AI-driven technology to enhance parking zone monitoring. The initiative, led by the city's fully owned company TSK, aimed to replace the existing service with smart, camera-equipped cars for more efficient monitoring of parking and road conditions. The project was awarded to Iterait, a start-up that developed advanced AI technology capable of license plate recognition, identifying parking violations, and assessing road conditions such as damaged traffic signs, markings, and surfaces.

The project followed a thorough needs analysis and market consultation, involving both Czech and international partners to maximize data usage. Seven applicants participated in the qualification phase, with four suppliers undergoing real-world testing. A unique, state-supervised lottery determined the evaluation of monitoring routes, ensuring fairness and setting a precedent for transparency in public procurement. Evaluation criteria included quality (60%), price (30%), and innovation (10%).

Find out more about Camera Car in this video.

Second place: Joint POSIDON PCP, Spain/Italy

The POSIDON Pre-commercial Procurement, designed by Sara Bedin and led by the Port Network Authority of the Eastern Adriatic Sea in Trieste, stands as a remarkable and pioneering example of public procurement driving real impact.

Acting on behalf of the Municipality of Bilbao and three other leading procurers — SPAQUE (Belgium), CEA–Vitoria Gasteiz City Council (Spain), and Baía do Tejo (Portugal) — the Port Authority of Trieste, professionally advised by Sara Bedin, has procured, through phased implementation, breakthrough R&D services in the field of in-situ soil decontamination, targeting sites heavily contaminated by petroleum hydrocarbons and heavy metals.

By launching a competitive process from the earliest stages — from conceptual design, through early-stage development, to full-scale field testing — POSIDON has laid the groundwork for the emergence of novel in-situ technologies, that not only exceed the current state of the art (and, indeed, have been patented) but are also ready for market deployment or broad commercial rollout. In particular, the awarded Soil-Omic with BIO-flushing solution is an advanced protocol that combines biological and chemical-physical treatments, integrating metagenomics with environmental engineering to decontaminate both soils and groundwater from organic and inorganic pollutants.

Find out more about Joint POSIDON PCP in this video.

Third place: EMS LLS, The Netherlands

The City of The Hague and grid operator Stedin are developing a smart electricity grid in Scheveningen. Due to the growth of solar panels and electric vehicles, the regional grid is becoming increasingly congested, leading to a higher risk of power outages. A smart, controllable autonomous electricity grid – also known as a 'microgrid' or 'smart grid' – can be an important solution to this problem. Living Lab Scheveningen is building its own smart grid on the northern harbour head. Various users, such as the Port Control Centre, beach pavilions, and solar panels on municipal real estate, are already using the grid and the smart metering.

The next step is to further expand the electricity grid with physical and digital infrastructure, and the necessary control through an energy cooperative in which the users are united. They drafted a tender to make the grid 'semi-autonomous', with data infrastructure, dashboarding, prediction models, control mechanisms and management software. With this, they want to greatly increase the flexibility in the electricity grid in order to offer a solution to grid congestion and to ensure that energy is used where it is generated.
This experiment provides important information for the realisation and operationalisation of these types of semi-autonomous grids, with opportunities to scale up across the entire city and region where Stedin is active, as well as as an example for other grid operators.

Find out more about EMS LLS in this video.

Winner: CABRIO-TRIPTYCH, Belgium

The CABRIO-triptych consists of three related tools, each of them focusing on a circular "improvement" of the tendering process in the design and construction world.

The first tool is CABRIO: a guideline of circular selection criteria and award criteria, for the appointment of a designer, a contractor or a design & build team;  This guideline focuses on criteria, other than the usual criteria (typically: pricing);  e.g. the amount of "embodied carbon" of construction works, ahead of what the EU taxonomy will soon require. We took care that start-ups have a fair chance to compete with established firms;  This guide is copy-paste-ready, so that it can easily be inserted into the "template" specifications that specifiers commonly use.

The second tool is CIRCUBESTEK: a bundle of technical specifications of specific circular materials and systems in the building industry; We took care that innovative new products were integrated as well.  This bundle was drawn up in the system that specifiers commonly use. 

The third tool is AMBITIEKAART: an "ambition map", to detect very specific actions on which a local authority can focus ; these actions are more or less catalogued according to the R-strategies: Refuse, reuse, rethink, recycle and so on,..). This ambition map is supported by examples and applications;  after all, circular construction remains a hazy story in the eyes of the target audience for the time being.

Find out more about CABRIO-TRIPTYCH in this video.

Second place: H2Global, Germany 

The H2Global double-auction mechanism
Renewable hydrogen and its derivatives are crucial in the fight against the global climate crisis, providing a carbon-free alternative to fossil fuels. Produced from renewable energy, they are key for decarbonizing hard-to-electrify sectors such as heavy industry and shipping.

The H2Global instrument, implemented by Hintco, was created to accelerate the market ramp-up of renewable hydrogen and its derivatives to help meet Europe’s ambitious net-zero goals.

The innovative double-auction mechanism connects producers and buyers of renewable hydrogen and its derivatives through competitive auctions where producers offering the lowest and buyers offering the highest price are selected. Hintco bridges the gap between high production costs and low ability to pay, ensuring that projects move from planning to large-scale implementation.

By simulating a functioning market through its double-auction mechanism, H2Global solves the "chicken-and-egg" problem of low demand and insufficient supply.

Find out more about H2Global in this video.

Third place: Net Zero Persikan, Sweden

The NetZero Persikan Project is a City of Stockholm urban redevelopment project located in the central parts of Stockholm. The project sees an old industrial estate, previously used as a bus depot, turned into a dense residential area with seven new city blocks and a new park and street grid. The City is directly responsible for the ground works. 

In total the project has required four separate construction contracts stretching back several years. The first three contracts featured conventional procurement methods using lowest price evaluation. For the initial two contracts this was reasonably successful, but the third contract proved troublesome and was prematurely terminated. 

The termination of the third contract led the City to adopt a new approach. It was judged that the completion of the project would require a highly skilled contractor. Experience from other projects had shown that the most skilled contractors were interested in tenders with a climate positive impact. To leverage this interest the project decided to realign its goals to focus on reduced emissions from construction machinery and transports.

Find out more about Net Zero Persikan in this video.