European Social Innovation Competition: meet 15 finalists fighting energy poverty

The Commission announced today the 15 finalists of this year’s European Social Innovation Competition.

The shortlisted finalists are all social innovation projects with inspiring visions of how to tackle this year’s challenge: “fighting energy poverty”. The European Social Innovation Competition 2023 supports proposed solutions coming from social innovators to fight energy poverty in the broadest sense. Among the 15 finalists, we can find solutions focused on monitoring, pricing models, production, consumption and energy savings, renovations, energy community and joint investments.

The competition is open to social innovators from EU Member States and countries associated to Horizon Europe. The jury members evaluated all applications considering the following criteria:

1. Degree of Innovation: the degree to which any new product, service or model is new for its given context in connection to the challenge of the competition. The idea must be new and innovative within its given socio-economic and geographical context;

2. Impact: the potential of the proposal to tackle the competition’s challenge (fighting energy poverty). The applicant must demonstrate how the proposed solution will contribute to solving the challenge;

3. Sustainability: the financial and environmental sustainability of the proposal;

4. Scalability and replicability: the idea's potential to scale and be replicated, be it at regional, national, European, or global level.

The finalists are (in alphabetical order):

What happens next?

The finalists will be invited to attend the Social Innovation Academia in Brussels (on 31 January and 1 February 2024).

The three winners will be revealed on 14 November 2023 during the European Social Innovation Competition Awards ceremony in San Sebastian, Spain. Each of them will receive €50 000.

Background

This eleventh edition of the European Social Innovation Competition (EUSIC) is supported by the European Innovation Council (EIC) under Horizon Europe.

The European Social Innovation Competition aims at stimulating the potential of social innovation to provide solutions to societal challenges that we face and to foster sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe. It will directly support ideas best illustrating this rationale. It will engage people, businesses and start-ups in a large range of sectors, as well as universities, engineering schools and civil society organisations thereby creating new connections, sources of sustainable growth and meaningful job opportunities.

The prize attracts a great number of applicants each year. Past editions topics were the following: ‘The future of living, innovation for affordable and sustainable housing districts’ (2022), ‘Skills for tomorrow - Shaping a green and digital future’ (2021), ‘Reimagine Fashion’ (2020), ‘Challenging Plastic Waste’ (2019), ‘Re:think Local’ (2018), ‘Equality Rebooted’ (2017), ‘Integrated Futures’ (2016), ‘New Ways to Grow’ (2015), ‘The Job Challenge’ (2014), and ‘New forms of work’ (2013).

EUSIC is one of the five European Innovation Council Prizes granted under Horizon Europe, the EU's research and innovation framework programme. While the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) manages the prize, independent experts assess the applications.

Follow the Competition on Twitter: @EUeic #diogochallenge