Innovation Fund call for Small-Scale Projects

Innovation Fund call for Small-Scale Projects

The Innovation Fund is one of the world’s largest funding programmes for the demonstration of innovative low-carbon technologies. The Innovation Fund supports grants for projects aiming at commercial deployment of innovative low-carbon technologies, with the objective of bringing to the market industrial solutions to decarbonise Europe and support its transition to climate neutrality.

In addition, the Fund has a technical assistance component which allows unsuccessful proposals that meet certain conditions to benefit from project development assistance (PDA) support by the European Investment Bank.

The call is launched in accordance with the 2021 Financing Decision2 and will be managed by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) (‘Agency’).

Objectives

The two objectives of this call are:

1. Support projects demonstrating highly innovative technologies, processes, business models or products/services, that are sufficiently mature and have a significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

2. Offer financial support tailored to market needs and risk profiles of eligible projects, while attracting additional public and private resources, activities that support innovation in low-carbon technologies and processes in sectors listed in Annex I to the EU ETS Directive 2003/873, including environmentally safe carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) that contributes substantially to mitigating climate change, as well as products substituting carbon-intensive ones produced in sectors listed in Annex I to the EU ETS.

Expected impact

Projects to be funded by this Innovation Fund call are expected to contribute to the transition to a climate-neutral economy by 2050 and to the target to reduce emissions by at least 55% by 2030 as defined in the European Climate Law4 and the European Green Deal5.

Available budget

The available call budget is EUR 100 000 000 for grants and EUR 2 000 000 for project development assistance (PDA) support.

Timetable and deadlines

Call opening: 31 March 2022
Deadline for submission: 31 August 2022 – 17:00:00 CET (Brussels)

For further details, please feel free to contact the EUFUNDINGHUB.