Clean energy and sustainable innovation
I helped expand Ukraine’s energy market access for households and independent producers, including co-initiating its household solar feed-in tariff. For two decades, I have developed renewable-energy projects and markets, bringing policymakers, industry leaders, and investors together. Founder & President of the Sustainable Innovation Council.
Original work
EVALUATION METHOD · TESTED IN PRACTICE
The Symbiotic Matrix
Our consequence-first method for evaluating innovation, which weighs what an invention changes before how fast it grows. Developed as a simple alternative to traditional venture evaluation, and tested in the Imagine Next Global Innovation Challenge, where it was used to evaluate 162 applicants in depth.
How the Matrix works →Ventures & institutions
2024 — now
Sustainable Innovation Council
Programs and tools that help climate innovation find capital and reach the world. The Sustainable Innovation Council received Silver at the 6th Annual Anthem Awards for the Imagine Next Global Innovation Challenge.
Visit SICouncil →2006 — 2025
Renewable Energy & Cleantech Market Development in Emerging European Markets
For nearly two decades, Ibcentre built the region's premier clean-energy deal-making and business-development platforms, alongside consulting and engineering of MW-class renewable and bioenergy plants in Ukraine and beyond.
2011 — 2014
Portable solar
Co-founded the first manufacturer of portable solar chargers in Eastern Europe, producing high-capacity chargers in Ukraine and bringing the category into retail.
2017 — 2021
3D-printed fashion manufacturing
Pioneered a model for manufacturing 3D-printed clothing in the United States on large-format industrial printers our team re-engineered for flexible materials, producing the first commercially sold 3D-printed garments in the U.S. Presented a fully wearable collection at New York Fashion Week.
Recognition: Gold Edison Award · Green Product Award · Eluxe Award
2021 — 2023
Digital delivery of physical goods
Replaced warehouses of physical products with online storage of 3D-printable designs, produced on demand through distributed, localized advanced manufacturing.
The flexible 3D-printed flag project achieved a Guinness World Record.
Read more →Co-foundedInstitute of Green Economics, Kyiv (2013–now) · Female Founders & Funders of Berkeley · Ukrainian Club of Berkeley
Founding memberUkrainian Valley
AlsoSelection committee and mentor, Berkeley SkyDeck
Policy & institution building
Helping create the conditions for clean energy to grow.
I helped advance Ukraine’s household solar market, build renewable-energy industry institutions, and bring policymakers and industry leaders together around energy security. My experience includes serving as Vice-Chair of a State Agency of Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving of Ukraine Public Council, on APEU’s board, and on the World Wind Energy Association’s Eastern European Committee.
Through the Sustainable Innovation Council, I work to make public and catalytic funding more accessible to climate innovators. Rainlight builds a personalized funding plan for each innovator, powered by our Symbiotic Matrix, a consequence-first method for evaluating innovation.
Energy coverage
pv magazine: Conventional grids place power plants in the crosshairs →Renewables Now: Ukraine highlighted vulnerability of centralised energy systems →Radio Svoboda: Household solar policy (in Ukrainian) →Selected Writing
Why Fast-Tracking Ukraine’s EU Membership Is in Europe’s InterestUkrainska Pravda · August 7, 2024 · Opinion · In Ukrainian
Included in the Ukraine Recovery Digest by the Reforms Delivery Office of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.What I believe
We have grown very good at innovation and far less practiced at asking what it should serve.
I believe we can cultivate human inventiveness, including the ability to question the goals we inherit. Human and biological intelligence are forms of Earth-native intelligence. We have already built a vast apparatus for turning ideas into reality; now it’s time to pay more attention to the ideas we bring to life.
I believe the rest of living Earth has a right to exist and to thrive, not as a resource or a backdrop, but as a stakeholder in what we build.
Take that seriously, and the brief for every invention changes.
What would we design then?
Julia Daviy
The book · December 2026
Inventing Beyond the Goals We Inherited
In 2023, I set myself a challenge: one new concept every day that could help address the Sustainable Development Goals. It took 616 days and produced 365 concepts. Then the practice changed the question.
Also, with my daughter, the children’s book Eva and the Time-Traveling Turtle.
Imagine Next Global Innovation Challenge
A global challenge for planet-first inventions, evaluated with the Symbiotic Matrix. In 2026, founders from 36 countries took part. The 2027 edition opens to ventures, policy, research, and financial inventions.
Speaking
Invited to NATO HQ, UC Berkeley, Berkeley Haas, and international platforms.
Inventing beyond inherited goals
The practice of inventiveness behind Imagine Next
Clean energy as security
What two decades of building energy markets in Ukraine teach about resilience
What changed
MARKET BUILDING · REGION
Where the region's clean-energy deals were made
For nearly two decades, Ibcentre ran the premier deal-making and business-development platforms for renewable energy in Eastern Europe and beyond, spanning renewables and energy storage, energy efficiency, green building, water and waste technologies, and organic products. Manufacturers entered markets there, built distribution, and signed contracts for clean-energy projects. In 2025, the focus turned to rebuilding energy systems.
Moldova's Ministry of Energy on CISOLAR →FIRSTS · 2009–2018
Projects that changed what seemed possible
ENERGY SECURITY · EUROPE
Renewables as European security
In 2014, I initiated the European Energy Security Forum in Brussels, organized through Ibcentre with Energy Watch Group, one of the first to frame renewable energy as a matter of Europe's security, especially on its eastern border.
Read the case study →CLEAN ENERGY POLICY · UKRAINE
Households could sell solar power to the grid
It began on my own roof. In 2011, with a solar system installed on my home, I asked the national energy regulator to let households, not only companies, sell power to the grid. Together with industry colleagues, it took three years of public discussion and initiatives to win the regulator's decision, and by 2015 the right was written into law, helping unlock rapid growth in residential solar.
Work cited in
Advances in Fashion and Design Research III · Springer, 2025
The Business of Additive Manufacturing · Routledge, 2024
Novel Sustainable Process Alternatives for the Textiles and Fashion Industry · Springer, 2023
Leading Edge Technologies in Fashion Innovation · Palgrave Macmillan, 2022
Digital Manufacturing Technology for Sustainable Anthropometric Apparel · The Textile Institute Book Series, 2022
Meet Julia
Julia Daviy is a Ukrainian-American inventor and founder whose work spans energy policy, renewable-energy deployment, and market development. In Ukraine, she helped expand energy market access for households and independent producers and co-initiated the policy behind the country’s household solar feed-in tariff. Over two decades, she developed renewable-energy and bioenergy projects and industry platforms through Ibcentre, bringing policymakers, industry leaders, and investors together around implementation and energy security. She began her career as an economic journalist covering energy markets and later served in renewable-energy policy roles in Ukraine. She studied energy engineering, holds bachelor’s degrees in environmental science and international economics and a master’s in international economics from Kyiv, and an MBA from UC Berkeley Haas, where her coursework included energy markets and policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy.
Learn more about Julia →Let’s talk.
For collaboration, partnerships with the Sustainable Innovation Council, speaking, and advisory roles.
Get in touch