2025
Climate and Water
In September 2025, 120 students joined forces to tackle real-life sustainability challenges, collaborating closely with industry partners and topic experts.
Partners and Challenges:
CARE Denmark – Transforming Water Access in Dadaab Refugee Camp
Danish Shipping & DFDS – Stewards of the Ocean
DTU Aqua – Rethinking Coexistence of Floating Offshore Energy and Nature
Catapult Projects & Technology Leaving Noone Behind – Climate Resilient and Socially Inclusive Neighbourhoods
Read more about the challenges below.
Program partners:
IDA. The Footprint Firm. DHI.
Additional Partners:
The EU, The Danish Maritime Foundation, Fonden for Entreprenørskab
Winners:
Team F.I.V.E. – Refugee-led hubs that recycle greywater for agriculture and commercial use – turning waste into resilience and opportunity.
Team Women4Ocean – A member-based certification program equipping ships with ocean sensors – powering science, smarter seas, and maritime inclusivity.
Team Aquafloat – A floating offshore wind platform that minimises noise and vibrations, protecting marine ecosystems while expanding green energy.
Team Communities4Climate – Turning Esbjerg’s flood-prone areas into community gardens – reducing flood risks while strengthening community life.
Challenges
OpenInnovation Climate and Water 2025
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Challenge 1
Transforming Water Access in Dadaab Refugee Camp
CARE Danmark is a green aid organisation working with a focus on climate, innovation and market-based solutions to identify, test, and scale locally driven climate solutions that benefits the most climate vulnerable populations in the Global South.
Globally, climate change escalates humanitarian needs while the past decades’ level of public humanitarian aid is on rapid decline. This calls for new approaches that reduces dependency on public funds and instead build on market-based approaches to mobilize private capital to drive humanitarian impacts at scale.
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Challenge 2
Stewards of the Ocean
Marine ecosystems are being transformed by pressures we barely understand. Unlike terrestrial environments, which have benefited from centuries of scientific study, our understanding of the ocean remains limited and uneven. Marine ecosystem knowledge gaps have a significant impact on the quality of decision-making and the speed at which society can counter biodiversity loss. Marine environments often remain a data desert, forcing policymakers to choose between inadequate protections or disruptive bans. Could shipping contribute to changing this situation?
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Challenge 3
Rethinking Co-existence of Floating Offshore Energy and Nature
DTU Aqua, Denmark’s largest marine research institution, presents a challenge in collaboration with EU sister institutions under the NID4OCEAN initiative. The EU has set the ambitious goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 and has also taken a world-leading position on biodiversity, aiming to halt biodiversity loss by protecting 30% of European seas.
Expanding protected areas and offshore renewables will require more than “business as usual”—which is why NID4OCEAN has been tasked by the European Commission with identifying novel ideas for nature-inclusive designs (NiDs) for future floating offshore wind farms in European waters.
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Challenge 4
Climate Resilient and Socially Inclusive Neighbourhoods
Catapult Projects is a design studio that applies a democratic design approach focused on diversity, inclusion and creative co-creation with citizens to strengthen local neighbourshoods. Catapult has partnered with Technology Leaving No One Behind – an initiative focused on making inclusion and accessibility a natural part of engineering at DTU.
A long-neglected neighbourhood faces the dual pressures of deep-rooted social issues and increasing climate-related flooding. A multi-year initiative has been set up to explore how inclusive, democratic design methods can drive both environmental resilience and meaningful social transformation.
2025 Challenge Partners
This year’s OpenInnovation is also powered by DHI, The Footprint Firm, and IDA – Ingeniørforeningen who will contribute with their expert insights, inspirational talks, mentoring and exciting awards!
Strong Partnership
OpenInnovation is brought forward by a strong partnership between three leading Danish universities.
