Skip to main content
European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency
News article5 May 2021European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency

Innovation Fund supporting a cleaner future in Europe

IF-Driving clean innovative technologies - infographic

The Innovation Fund is one of the world’s largest funding programmes for the demonstration of innovative low-carbon technologies. It aims at bringing greenhouse gas emission reductions by supporting breakthrough technologies in renewable energy, energy-intensive industries, energy storage, and carbon capture, use and storage, thus paving the way to climate neutrality and reinforcing European technological leadership on a global scale. Since the Agency began managing the Innovation Fund in 2020, two calls have been launched.

Large-scale call

The first call of the Innovation Fund opened on 3 July 2020 with a budget of of EUR 1 billion for large-scale projects with a capital expenditure larger than EUR 7.5 million. The call closed on 29 October and received 311 project proposals. Following their evaluation, CINEA has invited 70 projects to submit a full application to the second and final stage of the call for proposals.

CINEA organised together with DG CLIMA on 15 April a webinar explaining the application process for the second stage of this Innovation Fund call for large-scale projects. Around 700 participants took an active part in the webinar, receiving many answers to their questions in what was a very interactive session. Don’t forget to visit the event page for the presentations and the recording.

Small-scale call

On 1 December 2020, the European Commission launched a call with a budget of EUR 100 million for small-scale projects with a capital expenditure between EUR 2.5 and 7.5 million. This call closed on 10 March 2021 and received 232 project proposals, which are currently undergoing evaluation by a pool of independent experts.

Following the submissions of the large and small-scale calls, the European Commission organised a webinar on 28 April on the lessons learnt from the two calls. This webinar delivered good insights into the types of applications submitted to these two calls, best practises and common mistakes, the results of the applicants’ survey on the application process of the small-scale call as well as a glance into the next steps of the implementation of the Innovation Fund programme. For further information on the presentations and recording, visit the event page.

Stay tuned on our social media and on CINEA’s website for our next updates and upcoming calls of the Innovation Fund. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube. And enjoy reading our Clean Energy newsletter.