The European Commission (EC) has announced a call for applications for the Innovation Fund Small Scale Projects.

Objectives

The objectives of this call are to:

• support small-scale projects demonstrating highly innovative technologies, processes or products, that are sufficiently mature and have a significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions;
• offer financial support tailored to market needs and risk profiles of eligible projects, while attracting additional public and private resources;
• complement the large-scale call by targeting smaller-scale projects, thereby offering another opportunity, in particular for small and medium-size companies to have their project supported.

Eligible Activities

All following activities can be funded under this call:

• activities that support innovation in low-carbon technologies and processes in sectors listed in Annex I to the ETS Directive, including environmentally-safe carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) that contributes substantially to mitigating climate change, as well as substitute products,
• ctivities that help stimulate the construction and operation of projects that aim at the environmentally-safe capture and geological storage of CO2 (CCS),
• activities that help stimulate the construction and operation of innovative renewable energy and energy storage technologies.

Funding Information

The available budget for this call is EUR 100 000 000 for grants. These will be provided as lump sums.

Geographical Scope

• Only actions implemented on the territory of one (or more) of the EU Member States, Norway or Iceland are eligible for funding under this call.
• In the specific case of actions delivering greenhouse gas emission avoidance through the use of the product, e.g. production facilities for renewable energy or energy storage components, both the production and the use of products must take place in one of the EU Member States, Norway or Iceland. Therefore, in the calculation of GHG emission avoidance, applicants should consider only the part of the emission avoidance in the use phase that takes place in the territory of the EU, Norway or Iceland.
• Projects located on the territory of the United Kingdom (UK) —please be aware that eligibility criteria must be complied with for the entire duration of the grant. Any project located in the United Kingdom will only be eligible to receive funding from the EU ETS Innovation Fund insofar as this is provided for by an international agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom.

Eligibility Criteria

• In order to be eligible for funding under this call, the applicants must be:
  • legal persons;
  • belong to one of the following categories: private entities, public entities, or international organisations;
  • be directly responsible for the implementation and management of the project where relevant jointly with other applicants, i.e. not acting as an intermediary.
• The minimum number of applicants is one.

For more information, visit European Commission.