Testing Equitable Net Zero Partnerships between UK-Brazil

The technology sector has a paramount role in helping Brazil to change this scenario and advance actions through:

• entrepreneurship-driven innovation,
• technological tools, and
• greener methods of doing everything from industry production to smart mobility and cities, agriculture, education, finance, logistics, public services, and so on.

For that, the digital ecosystem must be engaged to create and develop more climatech solutions.

Connected Places Catapult partnered with Innovative Hub – IdeiaGov to run The Latin America Net Zero Challenges.

This programme sought to promote business-led research & innovation partnerships between the UK and Latin American countries to create joint solutions for the most pressing net-zero challenges in the UK, Latin America and beyond, focused on:

• resilient cities;
• mobility;
• sustainable fuels;
• reduction of emissions;
• changing the energy matrix.

For this challenge, 30 Latin American and British startups were selected and were mentored and showcased at COP26 in Glasgow.

To ensure these solutions continue their development and will be ready to be tested with Brazilian Stakeholders, CPC and the FCDO Brazil is running a project ‘Testing Equitable Net-Zero Partnerships between UK-Brazil’.

We have selected one equitable partnership between a UK and a Brazilian SMEs to foster their collaboration and pave the way for a demonstrator of net-zero technologies in 2022. It will therefore facilitate the entrance of UK companies into the Brazilian market.

This partnership will take part in tailored support and workshops to produce their joint business and implementation plan. They will work with a professional videographer to produce their promotional video to pave the way for a future demonstrator, which could receive funds from other donors such as Brazilian Innovation agencies.

The Brazilian SME MeteoIA and the UK SME Camnexus have partnered to tackle the challenge of water resourcing in LatAm in the face of climate change.

Building resilience against the challenges resulting from the climate change and weather variability in the water, food and energy systems should be a critical priority for both the public and the private sector, as climate change is only expected to increase them.

By increasing monitoring and predicting the availability of water resources, the water sector can improve their decision making and ultimately mitigate the impact of  climate  change.

MeteoIA and Camnexus are merging their solutions to co-develop an end-to-end operational system that monitors and predicts water resources and the hydrological balance components. A scalable wireless network of meteorological and hydrological sensors will be installed in water supply and distribution area of São Paulo.

AI models will be trained to predict these variables from weeks to months ahead, allowing enough time for mitigation measurements of events like severe droughts. The pilot proposal was presented to SABESP who have validated the need.

Read more about the SMEs on their websites; MeteoIA and Camnexus

As part of its goals to advance Net Zero goals and to promote collaboration between the UK and Latin America, the UK Government in partnership with UK Brazil Tech HUB worked with Connected Places Catapult to select two entrepreneurs that intend to combine their expertise and solutions to drive better climate resilience.