Légumes Perchés aims to reconnect citizens with nature and local producers through urban agriculture. This young Lausanne-based company offers an agronomic and social design service to developers, construction companies, local authorities and schools. Space management is crucial in cities, and we optimise it by designing edible surfaces on rooftops and between buildings. We install these agricultural structures with partners and suppliers who respect the environment. Then, to make the edible space sustainable, we offer a number of support programmes for citizens with our association in the form of workshops throughout the four seasons.

Neustark makes CO2 sustainable. In the newly developed process, CO2 is converted into limestone in a sustainable way during the concrete deconstruction process. The resulting climate-neutral limestone has special properties that enable it to partially replace cement as a building material. This is important because the overall production of cement generates around 7% of global CO2 emissions and makes a significant contribution to the cost of construction projects. Neustark is a spin-off from ETH Zurich and in summer 2020, after several years of development, we were able to commission our commercial prototype.

Insolight is developing a new type of solar panel for agrivoltaics - combining agricultural production and electricity generation on the same plot of land. A major challenge in the energy transition is to deploy solar power plants without sacrificing useful agricultural land. Agrivoltaics offers the prospect of large surface areas and synergies on mounting structures, such as greenhouses. However, conventional solar panels degrade agricultural yields because of their opacity and are not breaking into this market. Insolight panels solve this problem by combining high efficiency (29% under direct light) with translucency in diffuse light, which is desirable for photosynthesis. The company, which has 15 employees, has just launched the marketing of its modules, with a target of 1,000 modules deployed over the next 18 months for pilot purposes, while production is outsourced to industrial partners in Europe.