The European Commission has selected 85 net-zero projects, including those involving hydrogen and maritime, to receive €4.8 billion in grants from the Innovation Fund.
Specifically, among the winners are projects of different scales (large, medium and small, alongside pilots), covering a wide range of sectors from the following categories: energy-intensive industries, renewable energy, energy storage, industrial carbon management, net-zero mobility (including maritime and aviation) and buildings. They are located in 18 countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Hungary, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden and Norway.
The selected projects are set to enter into operation before 2030 and over their first ten years of operation are expected to reduce emissions by about 476 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. According to the Commission, this will strengthen European industrial manufacturing capacity, reinforce Europe’s technology leadership and supply chain resilience and contribute to European decarbonization objectives, reducing emissions from the sectors that are particularly difficult to decarbonize.
The Commission said that these projects particularly contribute to reaching the following EU policy objectives:
Winners of the grant are due to sign their agreements with the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) in the first quarter of 2025, the Commission revealed, adding that in addition to these 85 projects, other “promising but insufficiently mature” projects will receive project development assistance from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
So far, the Innovation Fund has awarded about €7.2 billion to more than 120 innovative projects across the European Economic Area (EEA) through previous calls for proposals, and as disclosed, the next call will be launched in early December 2024.