BioEconomy Business Accelerator BioPaavo by Jamk University of Applied Sciences organised the GasumHackathon innovation competition last January as an assignment of the nordic energy company Gasum, together with growth company consultancy Kasvu Open. The purpose of the competition was to find a partner with near commercial solutions and interest to take the lead in creating value from the biogenic CO2 produced as a side stream at Gasum’s biogas plants in Finland and Sweden.
Of the five finalists, two were selected as the winners of the competition. Carbonaide’s solution is to use biogenic CO2 in concrete manufacturing, enabling combination of carbon use and storage, while in Inherit Carbon Solutions’ mature concept the CO2 will be permanently stored in geological storage.
“The competition has been very exciting and interesting, and the level of the entrants and their solutions was very high. We decided on Carbonaide and Inherit Carbon Solutions as the winners because they had clear value propositions based on carbon reduction, potential fast implementation and good pitches”, says Mikko Syrjänen, Director, Business Development at Gasum.
“However, because of the high quality of all participants, Gasum is willing to continue discussions with all participating teams”, Syrjänen continues.
The winning teams were very happy about the result and look forward to cooperating with Gasum to developing their solutions. Both Carbonaide and Inherit Carbon Solutions also saw possibilities in cooperating with one another.
The winner was chosen on 19 April at the hackathon day held in Espoo, Finland by a jury consisting of representatives from Gasum, Jamk University of Applied Sciences and Kasvu Open.
Gasum was very satisfied with BioPaavo’s capability in organising the whole process. “The hackathon process has been very smooth: well organised and structured. We have also received new connections because of the good visibility of the process”, says jury member Viljami Kinnunen, Senior Process Engineer at Gasum.
“Carbon capture and utilisation is on everyone’s lips, so it was a pleasure to be able to implement a Hackathon on this most current topic. We had five strong teams from five different countries participating in this international Hackathon, and their different solutions, which are also in different stages of commercialisation, can complement each other in the future. We are happy that good matches to Gasum’s needs were found at Hackathon, and that Gasum plans to continue discussions and build cooperation with all five Hackathon teams”, says Annimari Lehtomäki, Chief Specialist of Bioeconomy Business Accelerator BioPaavo.
