3 billion Euro for clean tech projects

The European Commission invests €3 billion in innovative clean tech projects to deliver on REPowerEU and accelerate Europe's energy independence from Russian fossil fuels.

The European Commission is launching the third call for large-scale projects under the EU Innovation Fund.

With a budget doubled to €3 billion thanks to increased revenue from the auctioning of EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) allowances, this 2022 call for large-scale projects will boost the deployment of industrial solutions to decarbonise Europe.

RePowerEU Priorities and Mid-sized pilots

With a special focus on the priorities of the REPowerEU Plan, the call will provide additional support towards ending the EU's dependence on Russian fossil fuels. The call will fund projects covering the following topics:

• General decarbonisation (budget: €1 billion) seeking innovative projects in renewable energy, energy-intensive industries, energy storage or carbon capture, use, and storage, as well as products substituting carbon-intensive ones (notably low-carbon transport fuels, including for maritime and aviation)
• Innovative electrification in industry and hydrogen (budget: €1 billion) seeking innovative projects in electrification methods to replace fossil fuel use in industry as well as renewable hydrogen production or hydrogen uptake in industry
• Clean tech manufacturing (budget: €0.7 billion) seeking innovative projects in manufacturing of components as well as final equipment for electrolysers and fuel cells, renewable energy, energy storage and heat pumps
• Mid-sized pilots (budget: €0.3 billion) seeking highly innovative projects in disruptive or breakthrough technologies in deep decarbonisation in all eligible sectors of the Fund. Projects should prove the innovation in an operational environment but would not be expected to reach large-scale demonstration or commercial production

Criteria for proposals

Projects will be assessed by independent evaluators according to five criteria:

• Level of innovation
• Potential to avoid greenhouse gas emissions
• Operational, financial and technical maturity
• Scaling up potential
• Cost efficiency.

The call is open for projects located in EU Member States, Iceland and Norway until 16 March 2023. Promising projects that are not sufficiently mature for a grant may benefit from project development assistance by the European Investment Bank.

Selected projects are expected to make a Final Investment Decision within 4 years after the award of the project. It is expected that between 30-40 projects will be supported in this third call for applications.

More information

Projects can apply via the EU Funding and Tenders portal where information on the overall procedure is available. Applicants will be informed about the results of the evaluation in the second quarter of 2023.

Enova is the National Contact Point fot the EU Innovation Fund.

For more information, go to Enova’s pages for the EU Innovation Fund (in Norwegian) or the European Commission’s information pages about the scheme.