Business and Investment Development Agency

EcoTech

EcoTech

Areas of interest

  • Green technologies
  • Technologies for environmental sustainability 
  • Batteries and renewable sources of energy
  • Smart distributed energy systems
  • Sustainable technologies in industry
  • Technological reduction of pollution
  • Lightweight materials
  • Industrial chemistry
  • Agriculture

Innovations and new technologies are the driving force of many world economies. Since 2020, CzechInvest has therefore focused on technologies in the area of environmental protection and sustainability. The Czech Republic is a signatory of international commitments aimed at environmental protection and stands side by side with the other countries of the EU-27 in the fight against global threats. It has also joined ambitious climate and energy commitments of the European Commission and believes in industry based on clean technologies. This is confirmed by rising government investment in environmental and energy research.  

The state of the environment in the Czech Republic was horrendous at the end of the 1990s. Communism had left deep wounds in the country’s landscape. With high levels of toxic substances, the country’s air quality ranked among the worst in Europe, while its soil had been contaminated by uranium mining, its landscape devastated by coal mining and its forests in the border regions killed by acid rain caused by heavy industry. In 1990, the new democratic government began to write the country’s modern history with emphasis on environmental protection, investment in cleaner technologies and support for Czech companies in conducting sustainable business.

At present, the Czech Republic is home to 67 universities, including important research institutes focused on environmental technologies, such as the Centre for Research and Utilisation of Renewable Energy in Brno, the SUSEN laboratory for nuclear energy research and the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The planned Centre for Energy and Environmental Technologies at the Technical University of Ostrava will soon become an exemplary facility for presenting the commercial utilisation of the latest technologies in plasma-based waste treatment and their subsequent use. 

Domestic companies focusing on environmental-protection technologies include, for example, Nafigate Corporation, developer of the unique Hydal technology, which is able to process used frying oil into biopolymers. Together with the Czech firm ERC-TEC, the Swedish company Skanska uses secondary raw materials in the production of concrete, thus addressing the problem of dwindling primary resources. In addition to that, we must also mention the companies whose operations are based on traditional Czech mechanical engineering, such as WIKOW, which supplies components for wind farms and hydropower plants around the world and is helping to shape the carbon-free future. 

The Czech Republic is also increasingly coming to the fore in the area of electromobility, for which it has the right prerequisites including not only a well-developed automotive industry, but also the largest lithium reserves in Europe. The municipality of Cínovec in the Ore Mountains is slowly becoming the centre of attention for the world’s carmakers, lithium-battery manufacturers and the supply chain as a whole. This is already true in the case of the Chinese battery manufacturer A123 and the domestic company HE3DA with its unique lithium-battery technology. 

Jakub HájekŘeditel Divize start-upů a Divize startupů a inovativních malých a středních podniků+420 727 876 563jakub.hajek@czechinvest.org
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