This Stakeholder Café - organised in the context of the H2020 XPRESS project - will seek to understand from stakeholders, public authorities, SMEs, financial institutions, and others, how to promote innovative start-up companies involvement for renewable energy projects in public procurement.

Public procurement can be an effective tool for promoting innovation and integration of RES - for municipalities and businesses. However, there are several barriers that need to be overcome. For example, it may be difficult for a public authority to find the small and medium-sized enterprise that can offer innovative services. By the same token, complex public procurement procedures might represent a burden for SMEs, especially start-ups. In this context, the workshop will be evaluating barriers and enablers to the collaboration between innovative SMEs and local government.

The stakeholder cafe is aimed at identifying solutions and proposals, considering both barriers (including EU procurement rules) and opportunities based on the most up to date results of the XPRESS project.