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European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency
News article31 March 2022European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency

Commission makes available fresh EUR 100 million for innovative clean technology projects

Innovation Fund

The European Commission is launching the Innovation Fund’s second call for small-scale projects making available EUR 100 million for projects in renewable energy, energy-intensive industries including substitute products, energy storage, and carbon capture, use and storage. 

The call is open for small-scale projects with capital expenditure between EUR 2.5 and 7.5 million located in EU Member States, Iceland and Norway. The funds can be used in combination with other public funding sources, such as State aid or other EU funding programmes. Projects will be evaluated against five criteria: greenhouse gas emission avoidance, degree of innovation, project maturity, scalability and cost efficiency. The selected projects will contribute to the transition to a climate-neutral economy by 2050.  

The call aims to support projects that deploy highly innovative technologies, processes, business models or products/services, are sufficiently mature and have a potential to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

Promising projects that will be evaluated as not sufficiently mature for a grant support may receive project development assistance by the European Investment Bank.  

Next steps 

Applicants can submit their proposals via the EU Funding and Tenders portal where all relevant information is available. Further, a dedicated info day on 6 April 2022. The deadline for submission of applications is 31 August 2022.  

Applicants will be informed about the results of the evaluation in the first quarter of 2023. Grants to successful applicants will be awarded indicatively in May 2023. 

We have also published useful documents to help you out: the best practices and statistics for the small-scale projects. Furthermore, potential applicants can also use the self-check questionnaire, a new tool to help applicants understand if their project fits the objectives and key requirements of the Innovation Fund.

Background 

The Innovation Fund is one of the world’s largest funding programmes for the demonstration of innovative low-carbon technologies. The Innovation Fund aims to bring to the market industrial solutions to decarbonise Europe and support its transition to climate neutrality. 

For the period 2020-2030, the Innovation Fund will allocate around EUR 38 billion from the auctioning of allowances under the EU Emissions Trading system, subject to the carbon prices. 

The Innovation Fund is implemented by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) 

Details