AWS Public Sector Blog

Announcing nine startups selected to participate in the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator for Infrastructure

Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the startups chosen to participate in the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator for Infrastructure. These startups are developing groundbreaking solutions to help cities address infrastructure-related sustainability challenges. Infrastructure, or the built environment, encompasses all aspects of our lives, and includes real estate, manufacturing, power, utility, and transportation systems.

The nine startups in the cohort originate from four countries across North America, Latin America, and Europe, and represent a wide range of innovative sustainable solutions:

  • Accelerate Wind, from St. Louis, Missouri, USA, is developing affordable wind turbines for commercial buildings designed to be installed at the edge of roofs to take advantage of wind that naturally speeds up as it travels over roof edges. They use high performance computing (HPC) to run models that inform the placement, shape and size of turbines.
  • BlocPower, from Brooklyn, New York, USA, provides smart, all-electric heating, cooling, and hot water systems to building owners. BlocPower uses its software for analysis, leasing, project management, and monitoring of urban clean energy projects. Their solution seeks to help customers save costs on energy bills annually.
  • Conservation Labs, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, delivers technology that monitors water use and equipment to reduce costs, carbon, and risk. The company monitors sound signatures from plumbing to measure accurate water flow estimates, leak alerts, and water insights. This information helps show customers ways to use less water.
  • Ecolibrium, from London, UK, uses internet of things (IoT) infrastructure and proprietary machine learning (ML) algorithms to deliver an instant snapshot of energy performance across commercial and residential properties. This data helps customers make better decisions to support operational cost optimization and net zero carbon targets.
  • ElectricFish, from Freemont, California, USA, builds and deploys distributed, resilient electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure to accelerate deployment in grid-constrained sites. The company aims to deliver technologies that make energy more equitable and resilient.
  • hello energy, from Rotterdam, Netherlands, offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that enables real estate owners to engage tenants and stakeholders to connect and create energy-positive buildings. Through surveys, communication, and sharing tips and tricks, hello energy helps make change manageable, simple, and fun to drive more sustainable behavior.
  • RUNWITHIT Synthetics, from Edmonton, Canada, uses synthetic data modeling to show customers the impact of sustainability decisions. RUNWITHIT creates digital city sandbox environments, then adds scenarios of weather, policy, technology, and infrastructure to help measure predicted outcomes, including climate, emissions and economics.
  • VIA, from Sommerville, Massachusetts, USA, offers a Web3 platform that gives consumers ownership of their private energy data, compensates consumers for taking actions that contribute to mitigating climate change, and verifies that consumers took the actions they said they would, including turning down thermostats or selling rooftop solar.
  • Vutility, from Sandy, Utah, USA, offers a scalable, wireless, and battery-less, behind-the-meter tracker that delivers minute-by-minute visibility for energy use down to the circuit-level or individual asset. Vutility’s IoT and cloud-enabled solutions help reduce the total cost of ownership for sub-metering applications.

The nine companies were selected from hundreds of applications, representing 27 countries, by a panel of experts from AWS, Freshwater Advisors, and Public Spend Forum.  The accelerator will be delivered in collaboration with Freshwater Advisors, a national innovation consultancy and venture catalyst, and Public Spend Forum, a market intelligence platform connecting government buyers with innovation.

AWS launched the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator program in March 2022 to help address the crucial need for innovative and collaborative solutions that focus on global climate and clean tech challenges. Over five weeks, the program immerses startups in cloud education with hands-on technical training in capabilities like machine learning (ML) and high performance computing (HPC). In addition, selected startups are eligible to receive business and go-to-market mentorship from AWS sustainability experts, and opportunities to connect with AWS customers, industry leaders, and members of the AWS Partner Network (APN) looking for sustainable solutions. Some of these content delivery partners include CBRE, ProLogis, AmFAM Institute, and Evergreen Climate Innovations. Startups are also eligible to receive AWS computing credits.

The culmination of this program will be the AWS Sustainable Cities Demo Day in 2023, during which the selected startups will showcase their technology in person. Stay tuned for more information and details.

Learn more about how AWS enables sustainability solutions for customers and partners.

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