Ioannis Orfanos, Director of Green Value Associates, spoke at SBC TV in its energy focused telecast to the director of energypress.gr and journalist Theodore Panagoulis.

Ioannis was initially asked about clean tech start-up trends and then to elaborate on the related applicable entepreunership opportunities in Greece.

Ioannis started by highlighting, according to a recent IEA World Energy Outlook, the problems facing the world's energy systems as demand increases and the pressure to reduce emissions intensifies. Therefore, he noted the numerous opportunities for new businesses to flourish in areas where energy and clean tech meet. Especially where demand efficiency, renewable energy generation and active energy management integrate.

He mentioned that among other promising sectors, solar PV installation (especially on rooftops), microgrids, energy storage and energy ICT enablers most likely would  be areas where investments would take off. With lots of notable examples already. The same goes for clean tech technologies that advance energy efficinecy in buildings.

In Greece, he pointed out that there are some undeniable opportunities but also certain drawbacks. On a positive note, local universities and research centers are important partners in global research projects with significant scientific publications and noteworthy applied research. In addition, the emergence of a vibrant start-up community coupled with some successful entrepreneurial examples, especially in Energy ICT, show that momentum is building up.

However, various obstacles remain that hinder the creation of new associated businesses. Firtsly, there is limited commercialization of good ideas coming out from national university research projects and the country in general lags behind in technology transfer mechanisms. It is also missing dedicated expert resources and sector focused incubator centers. Given also the past 5 years macroeconomic situation, start-ups are finding difficult to access sector informed local capital from angel and VC investors. Local start-ups also lack know how and resources to open up new markets as a way to overcome the sector awareness inertia present in the national market.

Ioannis summarised that targeted and smart funding (leveraging available EU funds) together with specialised industry-sponsored business incubators are necessary and a good starting point to accelerate local start-up creation and help them competitively enter the national and global energy & clean tech market.

Ioannis concluded by saying that energy efficiency can create numerous opportunities for new businesses and investments, thus entepreuners, investors, other industry participants together with the regulators should work smart and calculated to untap the potential.

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To watch the interview (in Greek), please use the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q4yE3DVIDo