The Innovation Fund focuses on highly innovative technologies and big flagship projects with European value added that can bring significant emission reductions. It is about sharing the risk with project promoters to help with the demonstration of first-of-a-kind highly innovative projects.
The Fund aims to finance a varied project pipeline achieving an optimal balance of a wide range of innovative technologies in all eligible sectors (energy intensive industries, renewable energy, energy storage, CCS and CCU) in EU Member States, Iceland and Norway.
At the same time, the projects need to be sufficiently mature in terms of planning, business model and financial and legal structure.
The Fund also supports cross-cutting projects for innovative low-carbon solutions that lead to emission reductions in multiple sectors, for example through industrial symbiosis.
Selection criteria
Projects will be selected based on different criteria:
- Effectiveness of greenhouse gas emissions avoidance
- Degree of innovation
- Project maturity
- Scalability
- Cost efficiency (cost per unit of performance)
The detailed scoring and ranking methodology are set in each call for proposals