Shell GameChanger and The Idea Village Partner to Advance Coastal Restoration Through Innovation

NEW ORLEANS — Between 1932 and 2010, Louisiana lost over 1,800 square miles of land — an area larger than Rhode Island — due to coastal erosion. Since coastal land loss continues to be a significant challenge for the state, The Idea Village has again teamed up with Shell GameChangerTM to combat the problem.

According to a press release, the New Orleans-based nonprofit and Shell are now accepting applications for the second year of ENERGYx, an accelerator program to support startups and innovators with the potential to impact the future of Louisiana and coastal areas around the world.

“Coastal Louisiana is critical to Shell’s global businesses, and helping to advance water management, coastal protection and environmental restoration in a collaborative manner is important to the future of our company and community,” said Rick Tallant, Shell’s vice president of production in the Gulf of Mexico. “Together with Idea Village, we can share expertise and resources with the right start-ups, the right people, who can make a technologically game-changing impact in Louisiana and across the world.”

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The energy industry is at a crossroads where truly innovative technology, combined with global need, can radically lower project costs and enable currently non-viable solutions to make significant impacts in the world. ENERGYx will meet this need by focusing on highly scalable, emerging technologies for coastal construction and water management.

The program will kick off in New Orleans in November with a required weeklong bootcamp during which a handful of early-stage companies will go through an intensive customer development and business model validation process. Following the bootcamp, select companies will be invited into the 16-week accelerator program, running January through May, designed to turn their technological innovation into a viable, scalable business.

“Combining the entrepreneurial talent in New Orleans with the power and expertise of an innovative company like Shell allows us to uncover technological solutions that have the ability to solve the big problems we are facing not just in Louisiana, but globally as well,” said Brenna Kane, COO of The Idea Village.

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ENERGYx culminates in April with a Demo Day event, which will help to determine which companies are invited to the final pitch event in May held in conjunction with the 2020 State of the Coast conference in New Orleans. Invitations to this final pitch event are based on performance throughout the program and at Demo Day, and selected companies will be pitching for up to $250,000 of the Shell GameChanger non-dilutive seed funding opportunity to take their company to the next level.

“ENERGYx was a great program that moved our business forward,” says Nikita Iliushkin, VPT Founder and ENERGYx 2019 Alumni. “We got in contact with important stakeholders in a matter of days to test our assumptions and build our business.”

Applications close October 31. To learn more and apply, visit bit.ly/ENERGYx2020.

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