The European Commission has selected 85 innovative net-zero projects to receive €4.8 billion in grants from the Innovation Fund, helping to put cutting-edge clean technologies into action across Europe. For the first time, projects of different scales (large, medium and small, alongside pilots) and with a cleantech manufacturing focus have been awarded under the 2023 calls for proposals. This is the largest amount of support since the start of the Innovation Fund in 2020, boosting the total to €12 billion and increasing the number of projects by 70%.

Located across 18 countries—Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Hungary, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden, and Norway—the projects cover a range of sectors, including energy-intensive industries, renewable energy, energy storage, industrial carbon management, net-zero mobility (such as maritime and aviation), and buildings. 

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. This will contribute to European decarbonisation objectives, reducing emissions from those sectors that are particularly difficult to decarbonise, strengthen European industrial manufacturing capacity and reinforce Europe's technology leadership and supply chain resilience. 

The newly selected Innovation Fund projects were evaluated by independent experts against five award criteria: potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; degree of innovation; operational, financial, and technical maturity; replicability; and cost efficiency. 

Successful applicants are due to sign their grant agreements with the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) in the first quarter of 2025. In addition to the 85 projects selected for funding today, other promising but insufficiently mature projects will receive project development assistance from the European Investment Bank. 

It is expected that the Commission will launch the next call for proposals under the Innovation Fund in early December 2024. B2EU closely monitors this, so keep a close eye on our page.