The EU Innovation Fund is a major funding program aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions and supporting Europe's transition to climate neutrality. In the current round, 311 projects applied for funding, and seven projects were selected to receive a total of EUR 1.1 billion. These projects focus on energy-intensive industries, hydrogen, renewable energy, and carbon capture, use, and storage. The grant agreements for these projects were signed in March 2022. The second call for large-scale projects, with a budget of EUR 1.5 billion, has been launched and will finance breakthrough technologies in various sectors. The evaluation results will be provided in the third quarter of 2022.
The EU Innovation Fund is one of the world’s largest funding programmes for demonstrating innovative technologies that help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The goal of the fund is to bring industrial solutions to market between 2020 and 2030 to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in Europe and support its transition to climate neutrality. A total of 311 projects applied for funding in this current round, and seven were selected to share the EUR 1.1 billion allocated.
Awarded large-scale projects
The results of the first call for large-scale projects were published on 16 November 2021. 7 projects aiming to bring breakthrough technologies to the market in energy-intensive industries, hydrogen, renewable energy; and carbon capture, use and storage were pre-selected for grant agreement preparations.
The grant agreements were signed in March 2022 for all 7 projects. You can find the award decision in the legal framework section
Check out the project factsheets featured below to learn more about each project.
Energy intensive industries
Biofuels and biorefineries
- Beccs Stockholm: Bio Energy Carbon Capture and Storage by Stockholm Exergy
Chemicals
- ECOPLANTA: Reduction of CO2 Emissions from municipal non-recyclable waste to produce methanol
Iron and steel
- HYBRIT demonstration: Swedish large-scale steel value chain demonstration of Hydrogen Breakthrough Iron-making Technologies
Cement and lime
- K6 Program
Hydrogen
- SHARC: Sustainable Hydrogen and Recovery of Carbon
Renewable energy
Solar energy
- TANGO: ITaliAN PV Giga FactOry
Carbon capture, use and storage
CO2 capture and storage
- Kairos@C: Building strong momentum for massive decarbonisation in the EU through a unique end-to-end CCS project
Best practices and statistics from previous Calls for Proposals
This set of documents aims to support applicants to the Innovation Fund in preparing successful bids. The first document consolidates best practices and mistakes to avoid, following an analysis of the 2020 calls for large- and small-scale proposals. The second document presents the most relevant statistics on proposals submitted in the First Call for Large-Scale Projects.
Overview of the second call for large-scale project proposals
The second call for large-scale projects was launched on 26 October 2021. With a budget of EUR 1.5 billion, which is increased by 50% compared to the previous call, it will finance breakthrough technologies for renewable energy, energy-intensive industries, energy storage, and carbon capture, use and storage.
The deadline to submit a full application was 3 March 2022 and we received 138 applications in all eligible categories.
The information on the evaluation results will be provided in the third quarter of 2022 and grants will be awarded in the last quarter of 2022.