April 26, 2024

Innovation Pipelines for Innovation Fund

Energy-intensive companies in Europe need to participate at the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and, in short, to pay for their emission rights.

Vice versa, revenues generated by the ETS are reinvested in the Innovation Fund (IF), one of the world’s largest funding programmes for innovative low-carbon technologies, for the companies that want to reduce their CO₂ footprint. In this system, if a company invests in innovative technical solutions to reduce its emissions, it can partially recover the costs incurred for its technological innovation and related investment, and finally manage its ETS certificates incl. selling any surplus.

This year, more companies than before applied for IF grants, that are provided for energy intensive industries as well as for investments in the fields of renewable energies, hydrogen, and energy storage, along with – this is new – sectors like buildings, maritime, and road transport. The IF programme has its focus on the implementation of innovative technologies that significantly advance the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. However, the hurdles for IF applicants are high, while the success rates low.

To this end, the EU Commission called for support to promote and facilitate IF applications. Since the beginning of 2024, DIAMONDS4IF and its European “sister projects”, that responded to the call, have started their activities, in close cooperation with CINEA (The European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency), that is also responsible for managing the IF grants. DIAMONDS4IF is dedicated to the sectors related to renewable energy and will thus facilitate IF proposals based on innovations from European origin (incl. H2020 projects).

On 22 and 23 April 2024, the project partners of all support actions had the opportunity to meet in person, share best practices, ideas, and experiences. Our common objective is to develop innovative tools and systematic approaches to select promising projects and to support them in the transition to get ready for upscaling. This will also comprise systematic approaches to assess the readiness and feasibility of potential Innovation Fund projects, and guiding applicants in preparing the comprehensive applications.

In this context, we had the chance to introduce the DIAMONDS4IF goals, our project partners and our selection tool based on our intelligence platform © Wheesbee. This experience has also allowed us to learn about the EU Commissions expectations and thoughts about the further development of the IF programme. Moreover, we received valuable input on other funding opportunities by the European Investment Bank (EIB).

Image Source: ©PNO Consultants GmbH