On January 23rd, 2022, the EU has signed the grant agreements with the 16 innovative low-carbon projects that were first announced in July 2022 as the winners from its Innovation Fund program investing in the next generation of low emissions technologies. The 16 projects are expected to avoid about 125 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in the first 10 years of operation. The list of winning projects can be found here.
In total, the grants amount to EUR1.8 billion ($1.96 billion) and come from the EU’s Innovation Fund. The Innovation Fund aims to invest in cutting-edge low-carbon technologies with the revenue of more than €38 billion ($41 billion) until 2030 from the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS).
Relevant: Second Call Of EU Innovation Fund Awards Over $1.8B To 17 Clean Tech Projects
The awarded 16 projects are part of the second call of the funding program. Under the second call for large-scale projects, a total of 17 projects were pre-selected for grant agreement preparation, however, two of these projects did not successfully complete the process, therefore an additional project was invited from the reserve list.
After completing their grant agreement preparation successfully, the leaders of the 16 projects met on 19 January 2023 in Brussels for the signing of the agreement granting the project support from the Innovation Fund.
The successful initiatives include next-generation technologies in the clean energy and sustainability sectors like hydrogen, direct air capture with permanent storage of emissions, methanol production from renewable hydrogen, recycling Li-ion batteries for electric vehicles, sustainable cement production, new sustainable textile fibers applying novel green chemistry and others.
“Congratulations to these excellent projects. They will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and act as industry trailblazers on our path towards decarbonization… Thanks to the December agreement on EU Emission Trading System (ETS) Revision, which increases the Innovation Fund and provides for a new tool of competitive bidding, we will continue to support innovative businesses across Europe to develop and scale up cutting-edge decarbonization technologies,” said director general for climate action, Kurt Vandenberghe.
Relevant: EU Innovation Fund Launches Third Call For Projects At €3 Billion
With the granting of these projects, the number of total awarded projects so far by the Innovation Fund are 52. More information about these projects as well as grant contributions can be found here. An additional 19 were invited for grant preparation and will receive their money once they successfully pass the grant preparation process.
With the 16 projects added from the second call, the total number of large-scale projects comes to 23. Out of these 52 projects, 23 fall into the category of large-scale projects, and the rest are small-scale projects that are already under implementation. The small-scale projects selected in the second call for proposals are currently undergoing their grant agreement preparation with CINEA.
Additional 15 promising but not yet sufficiently mature projects from the second call for large-scale projects were awarded project development assistance. A third call for large-scale projects was launched on 3 November 2022 with a deadline for applications 16th of March 2023.
