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Applications for the third EU Innovation Fund call are open until 19 September 2023. Successful awardees will be notified next year.
As part of its Innovation Fund, the European Commission has today (30 March) launched a call for small-scale projects that focus on low carbon technology.
The new €100m call will provide projects with grants of between €2.5m and €7.5m. This call is the third appeal of its kind that the EU has launched as part of the Innovation Fund.
The funding will be given to projects exploring how the EU can become a front-runner in the areas of renewable energy, decarbonisation of energy-intensive industries, energy storage, as well as carbon capture, use and storage.
“Innovation is a key part of our green transition,” said Frans Timmermans, executive vice-president for the European Green Deal.
“There are many technologies under development that will help us reduce our emissions and drive jobs and growth in Europe. The Innovation Fund helps bring these technologies to market. The innovative small-scale projects that we are looking for today can revolutionise how entire industries operate tomorrow.”
These technologies should be sufficiently mature and have strong potential to achieve significant greenhouse gas emission reductions compared to conventional technologies.
Applications for the call are open until 19 September 2023, and projects must be implemented in any of the EU Member States, or in Iceland or Norway.
Successful awardees will be notified in the first quarter of 2024, with grants being distributed among the successful projects by June of the same year.
Applicants whose projects are deemed to be promising but not well-developed enough to qualify for a grant may receive project development assistance from the European Investment Bank (EIB). Up to 20 projects could qualify for this type of assistance under this call.
The two previous calls resulted in 47 different projects getting funding. The first call spread a total pot of €109m among 30 projects, while the second call funded 17 small-scale projects out of a pot of €62m.
These 17 projects are still finalising their individual grant agreements, which are expected in the next few weeks.
The latest call for large-scale projects under call two only closed earlier this month. A total of 239 applications were received, and the applicants will hear back from the evaluators about whether they were successful or not in the summer.
According to its website, the Innovation Fund considers small-scale projects to be those with total capital costs of below €7.5m.
Applicants can submit their project pitches for the current call using the EU Funding and Tenders portal.
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