The European Commission launched the first call for proposals under the Innovation Fund, one of the world’s largest programmes for the demonstration of innovative low-carbon technologies, financed by revenues from the auction of emission allowances from the EU’s Emissions Trading System on 3th of July.
The Innovation Fund will finance breakthrough technologies for renewable energy, energy-intensive industries, energy storage, and carbon capture, use and storage. It will provide a boost to the green recovery by creating local future-proof jobs, paving the way to climate neutrality and reinforcing European technological leadership on a global scale.
This call for proposals comes at just the right time. The EU will invest €1 billion in promising, market-ready projects such as clean hydrogen or other low-carbon solutions for energy-intensive industries like steel, cement and chemicals. We will also support energy storage, grid solutions, and carbon capture and storage. These large-scale investments will help restart the EU economy and create a green recovery that leads us to climate neutrality in 2050.”
Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans
The Innovation Fund focuses on:
- Innovative low-carbon technologies and processes in energy intensive industries, including products substituting carbon intensive ones
- Carbon capture and utilisation (CCU)
- Construction and operation of carbon capture and storage (CCS)
- Innovative renewable energy generation
- Energy storage
What will be funded?
The Innovation Fund will focus on highly innovative technologies and big flagship projects with European value added that can bring on 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.
It 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) and Member States.
At the same time, the projects need to be sufficiently mature in terms of planning, business model and financial and legal structure.
The Fund will also support cross-cutting projects on innovative low-carbon solutions that lead to emission reductions in multiple sectors, for example through industrial symbiosis.
The Fund is also open to small-scale projects with total capital costs under €7.5 million which can benefit from simplified application and selection procedures.
Cement Industry
In 2019, the Commission organised an Innovation Fund Tour of workshops hosted by sector associations and Member States to prepare the first call for proposals.
The list of projects presented at the workshops helped the Commission gather real life examples as test cases for various methodologies on the selection criteria.
Workshop hosted by cement industry was conducted in June 2019. You can download the presentations and minutes of the workshop via below links:
Minutes: https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/innovation-fund/2406-cement-minutes_en.docx
Presentations: https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/innovation-fund/2406-cement.zip
List of projects: https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/innovation-fund/public_project_database_en.pdf
