More than £70,000 worth of investment has been granted to seven companies in the city working on developing green technologies.

The start-up businesses are on the Low Carbon Accelerator programme based at Innovation Birmingham Campus which is part of the European-funded Climate-KIC initiative.

The low carbon start-ups pitched for the investment funding, which total £72,484, in front of a panel of three industry judges.

The grant funding will be used to pay for research and development and other activity to enable the low carbon products and services to be launched to market in an accelerated timescale.

Four of the seven start-ups have been selected to receive the maximum amount available per company, £14,482.

They are Intesys, which is developing the i-Magine predictive heating controller, while Borroclub is an online marketplace for people to rent out their idle household items to others who live nearby.

SPICA Technologies is developing Devicepoint - a risk management tool to control Legionella and which is powered by a secured wireless network and low-energy sensors.

Finally, Truckulus is a combined transport management system and return loads marketplace with a smartphone component, designed to significantly reduce the number of empty journeys made by hauliers.

Katharine Fuller, Innovation Birmingham's senior project manager for EU projects, said: "Early stage grant funding makes such a difference to start-up businesses.

"The timetable required for an entrepreneur to launch their product or service to market is critical and the funding available through the European Climate-KIC initiative enables the best businesses starting up in the low carbon sector to receive a helpful grant.

"In addition to this grant funding, all of the businesses will continue to work alongside our entrepreneurs in residence who have been specifically appointed as advisers to the Low Carbon Accelerator programme. The ultimate aim is to help to launch as many sustainable start-ups as possible."

The three judges awarding the grant funding were Clayton Shaw from Sampad, Dan Licari from the Knowledge Transfer Network and Dr Ben Onyido from Innovation Birmingham's Climate-KIC team.

The process was facilitated by Steve Harris, a Climate-KIC entrepreneur in residence.

The annual Climate-KIC Innovation Festival also takes place this week at the ICC in Birmingham and will bring together more than 300 low carbon entrepreneurs, stakeholders and partners from across Europe.