BarcelonaThe Enel Group, to which Endesa belongs, opened this Friday in Barcelona an innovation center to promote Catalan emerging companies in the energy sector. This is the tenth hub of these characteristics that has boosted energy in the world, and the second in Spain.
The project has been promoted together with Barcelona City Council as part of the Barcelona Innovation Coast (BIC), a public-private platform that aims to contribute to generating up to 40,000 jobs in the next decade.
As reported by the energy department, the new center, located at Endesa’s facilities in the Catalan capital, will host start-ups with projects aimed at the energy transition and electrification on demand, and will host activities that encourage contact between entrepreneurs and Enel.
In addition, in the words of the group’s head of innovation, Ernesto Ciorra, this new opening in Barcelona is strategic: “We don’t consider Barcelona as Catalonia. We don’t consider Barcelona as Spain. We consider Barcelona as the center of Europe, as the center of our European strategy,” said Ciorra.
In the same vein, the director of Endesa in Catalonia, Isabel Buesa, has claimed the “commitment with the territory” and has highlighted the company’s innovative bets in the distribution service, such as the use of robots and drones to inspect substations and service tunnels, and research into the use of new, more sustainable materials to “mitigate” the environmental impact of electrical infrastructure.
All in all, Endesa has stated that, apart from “energizing the entrepreneurship ecosystem” in Catalonia, the aim of the new innovation center is also to find solutions in the entire energy value chain, from the reduction of greenhouse gases up to the impact of electrical infrastructures on the environment or energy storage systems.
The CEO of Endesa, José Bogas, has explained that it is the second hub of innovation in Spain after the one in Madrid, and highlighted that “it shows that the company’s commitment to innovation in the energy sector remains stronger than ever”.
So, with this inauguration, the Enel Group adds a tenth innovation center to those it has distributed worldwide: San Francisco, Boston, Tel-Aviv, São Paulo, Santiago de Chile, Catania, Pisa, Milan and Madrid.