A grant of up to 60% aid intensity is available for innovative projects related to greenhouse gas emission reductions.
On 30 March 2023, the European Commission launched the third call for small-scale projects (between €2.5 million and €7.5 million) under the Innovation Fund. With a maximum aid intensity of 60%, the grant is available for sufficiently mature innovative projects with strong potential to achieve significant greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emission reductions.
The new call makes €100 million in grant funding available to small-scale projects with a capital expenditure between €2.5 and €7.5 million. The Innovation Fund provides non-refundable aid to innovative projects in the areas of:
- Renewable energy
- Decarbonisation of energy-intensive industries
- Energy storage
- Carbon capture, use and storage
The project is not expected to be a cross-border project and can be implemented in any EU Member State, Iceland or Norway. The size of the implementing company is not regulated (not only small, but large companies can also apply for the grant), and the consortium form is not required.
The applicants are required to determine the absolute and relative value of the GHG emission reduction (avoidance). Nevertheless, given that the projects will be implemented in the future, these values should only be estimates; however the Commission expects projects to achieve at least 75% of their estimated goal. The monitoring period is minimum 3 years from the start of the operation of the subsidized project.
The Commission will evaluate the applications in a single-round selection process based on the following five criteria:
- Degree of innovation (EU or national level, according to the applicant’s choice)
- Project maturity (technical, financial and operational maturity)
- Scalability (growth potential of the project, extent of knowledge sharing)
- GHG emissions avoidance
- Cost efficiency
In addition, the European Investment Bank provides Project Development Assistance (“PDA”) to promising projects that are not sufficiently mature. Within the framework of PDA, up to 20 projects may receive technical assistance in order to submit a successful application in the next call. The total amount of the PDA grant is €5 million.
The call is open until 19 September 2023, 17:00 p.m. The applications should be submitted directly to the European Commission via the Funding and Tenders platform in any of the official languages of the European Union (for reasons of efficiency, English is recommended).
The evaluation of the eligible projects will take place in Q4 2023. Applicants will be informed about the evaluation results in January 2024, and the grant contracts will be concluded with the selected applicants in June 2024.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that in the second call (closed in December 2022 under almost identical conditions), the Commission selected 17 prominent projects out of 66 applications received by the deadline and awarded a total of €62 million in grants. The selected projects covered a wide variety of sectors, from glass manufacturing to green hydrogen production and wind energy. The grant agreements are expected to be signed in Q2 2023.
For more information on the third call of the Innovation Fund, please visit the European Commission’s website, and contact us if you have any questions or if we can help you with your application.