The contest is aimed at all R&D centers, universities, SMEs, startups, among others, that have proposals that contribute to advancing electromobility and energy storage. Applications will be received from Monday, September 27 to October 24, 2021 through the website https://www.openinnspiral.com/maslitiomenoshuella and contemplates a prize of USD 100 to be distributed among the first three places.
Ehe promotion of clean and renewable energies responds to current environmental challenges and public awareness by contributing to curbing climate change and building a more sustainable world for new generations. In this area, SQM has made it a priority to contribute to carbon neutrality through its participation as a global supplier of sustainable lithium.
The company has historically been an innovator, and is also a leader in lithium production. This makes SQM open today a call for Open Innovation called "More Lithium, less footprint", which will aim to find innovative solutions that bring electromobility and stationary energy storage closer to people.
The proposal is part of the robust sustainability plan with specific goals that SQM presented in 2020 and which contemplates reducing the consumption of continental water in all its operations by 40% by 2030 and 65% by 2040; reduce the extraction of brine from the Salar de Atacama by 50% by 2030, a goal that began last year with an immediate reduction of 20%; and be carbon neutral in all its products by 2040, and in the case of Lithium, Potassium Chloride and Iodine by 2030.
In this regard, Pablo Altimiras, Senior Vice President of Lithium and Iodine Business at SQM, argued that “for SQM it is very important to contribute to the sustainable development of the country and improve the quality of life of Chileans. That is the fundamental reason why we are promoting innovation in the use of lithium-ion technologies through this call, which contemplates and seeks to discover new paths related to electromobility and storage systems, particularly that tend to solve situations of scarcity in communities or extreme conditions ”.
The call is made with the support of INNSPIRAL -accelerator of corporate innovation- and goes aimed at all R&D centers and universities, SMEs, startups, and initiatives under development, that have proposals that contribute and generate a positive impact on related initiatives.
In this context, it is that innovative proposals are sought with social and environmental impact that respond to specific challenges, within two macro themes. On the one hand, electromobility proposals that promote its development in Chile, preferably those that generate value in remote, isolated or vulnerable sectors of the country, contributing to an accessible and more energy efficient transport. On the other hand, it is expected to receive proposals for stationary storage that extend the use of storage technologies in the same preferred sectors previously mentioned, which do not have access to the electricity grid or have intermittent supply, in order to promote self-generation and self-consumption.
Applicants compete for a prize of USD 100 to be distributed among the first three places (USD50 for first place; USD30 for second place and USD20 for third place), in addition to support for the development of a winning business pilot and executive mentoring with SQM experts.
Applications and bases are found on the website https://www.openinnspiral.com/maslitiomenoshuella,. The call will be open from September 27 to October 24, 2021.
