Companies and partnerships working on innovative low-carbon technologies can apply for funding from the Innovation Fund. The Innovation Fund is a financing programme from the European Commission. We expect the programme to run from 2020 until 2030. The total budget is 10 billion euros.
The budget is from the European Emissions Trading System’s income (ETS). The European Commission published further details of the scheme on 3 July 2020.
Conditions
Companies and partnerships can apply with their projects. An applicant must belong to one of the sectors mentioned in the text of the call. The Innovation Fund has calls for 2 types of projects: large scale and small scale.
The Innovation Fund focuses on:
- Innovative low-carbon technologies and processes in energy-intensive industries
- Products that replace carbon-intensive products
- Carbon capture and utilisation (CCU)
- Carbon capture and storage (CCS)
- Renewable energy generation
- Energy storage
Applications for large-scale projects
The third call for large-scale projects is now open for applications. The available budget is doubled to 3 billion euro, thanks to the increased revenue from the auctioning of EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) allowances. The deadline for the submission of applications is 16 march 2023, 17:00 CET.
The third call counts four topics. The first three are part of REPowerEU (see more information below):
- Innovative electrification in industry and hydrogen. The budget is 1 billion euro.
- Clean tech manufacturing. The budget is 700 million euro.
- “Mid-sized pilots” projects for validating, testing and optimising highly innovative solutions. The budget is 300 million euro.
- General decarbonisation, which is available to all project eligible for the Innovation Fund, except those which fall under dedicated REPowerEU topics. The budget is 1 billion euro.
In the second quarter of 2023 the evaluation results will be presented. In the fourth quarter of 2023 the grants will be awarded and project development assistance will be provided.
The published press release can be read on europe.eu.
Applications for small-scale projects
The second call for applications for small-scale projects is now closed. The EU-agency CINEA carries out the evaluation process. External experts help CINEA with this process. Information on evaluation results and invitation for grant preparation is expected in the first quarter of 2023. In the second quarter of 2023 the award of the grants will be announced.
REPowerEU
The new geopolitical and energy market realities require to drastically accelerate the clean energy transition and increase Europe’s energy independence. Therefore the European Commission made a plan called REPowerEU. This is a plan for saving energy, producing clean energy and diversifying our energy supplies.
Role of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency
If you have serious plans to apply, please contact us. We can help you with your questions, such as combining subsidies. For example, an application for the Innovation Fund and a national scheme such as SDE ++. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency has, however, no role in the preparation or the assessment of an application for the Innovation Fund.
You can contact us via innovationfund@rvo.nl. Companies working on initiatives that contribute to a sustainable industry or large companies subject to ETS in the Netherlands have a contact person at the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. You can also contact this regular contact person. We will treat all information as confidential.