Enel Group, to which Endesa belongs, inaugurated this Friday in Barcelona an innovation center to boost Catalan startups, a project jointly promoted with the Barcelona City Council within the framework of the Barcelona Innovation Coast (BIC), a public-private platform whose objective is to contribute to generating up to 40,000 jobs in the next decade.
According to the multinational energy company, the new center, located in Endesa's facilities on Avenida Vilanova in the Catalan capital, will host startups with projects focused on energy transition and on-demand electrification, and will host activities that encourage contact between entrepreneurs and Enel. With this inauguration, the Enel Group adds a tenth innovation center to those it already has distributed worldwide: San Francisco, Boston, Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo, Santiago de Chile, Catania, Pisa, Milan, Madrid.
Endesa has stated that, apart from "dynamizing the entrepreneurial ecosystem" of Catalonia and strengthening relationships and collaboration opportunities with startups and innovative SMEs in the Catalan territory, the objective of the new innovation center also involves finding solutions throughout the energy value chain, from the reduction of greenhouse gases to the impact of electrical infrastructures on the environment or energy storage systems. According to Endesa, Catalonia is already for the Enel Group "a benchmark and testing ground in distribution and hydraulic production infrastructures."
The Barcelona Hub consists of a space where activities will be developed to favor interaction between entrepreneurs and the group's innovation teams, as well as the development of an innovation culture within the company. It will also have the capacity to host startups with solutions aimed at energy transition and demand electrification. Likewise, the modernist hall of the Avenida Vilanova building, Espai Endesa, will host innovation events.
The Enel Group's innovation program has, so far, analyzed the solutions of 13,650 startups and SMEs from around the world and has developed projects with 545 of these companies, of which nearly 125 have become suppliers to its subsidiaries.