The Commission has today opened the first call for proposals for the new Innovation Fund.
The Fund will support breakthrough technologies for renewable energy, energy-intensive industries, energy storage, and carbon capture, use and storage, and is financed by revenues from the EU’s emission trading system.
The first call will provide funding of €1 billion to large-scale projects for clean technologies to help them overcome the risks linked to commercialisation and large-scale demonstration.
For promising projects which are not yet ready for the market, a separate budget of €8 million is set aside for project development assistance.
The call is open for projects in eligible sectors from all EU Member States, Iceland and Norway. The funds can be used in cooperation with other public funding initiatives, such as State aid or other EU funding programmes.
Projects will be evaluated according to their potential to avoid greenhouse gas emission, innovation potential, financial and technical maturity, and potential for scaling up and cost efficiency.
Key conditions of the first call
- Only projects above €7.5 million of capital expenditure (large-scale projects) are eligible under the first call.
- The maximum co-financing rate is 60%.
- Support to projects, except for the project development assistance, will be disbursed as lump sum grants.
- There is a two-stage application procedure, comprising the expression of interest phase and the full application phase.
- The first stage deadline is 29 October 2020 and the second stage deadline 23 June 2021.
Find out more on the EU Funding and Tenders portal.
Funding