FCI study: industrial cleantech in France — innovation, financing and markets

As a group of thirteen industrial SMEs specialising in cleantech, FCI members share one conclusion: industrial cleantech is a complex market with distinctive, often poorly understood constraints. It differs substantially from other twenty-first-century growth markets such as digital technology, particularly in its financing needs.

Using qualitative and quantitative research, the study reviews two decades of innovation and the financial obstacles faced by innovative industrial SMEs. Forty-one start-ups and SMEs answered a detailed questionnaire, complemented by structured interviews with around fifteen chief executives, researchers, academics and specialist journalists.

The analysis calls for changes to public policy and to private and public financing strategies so that green industrial technologies can develop and scale effectively in France. Its recommendations seek to correct market failures, strengthen the innovation ecosystem, help industrial start-ups emerge and consolidate, and support reindustrialisation in France and the European Union.

This official FCI PDF is currently available in French only.