EU Innovation Fund awards EUR 3.6bn to 41 clean tech projects

The European Commission (EC) awarded on Thursday more than EUR 3.6 billion (USD 4.04bn) in grants to 41 large-scale clean tech projects, a significant portion of which concern the renewable energy and green hydrogen sectors.

The grants were awarded in the EU Innovation Fund’s 3rd call for large-scale projects, which attracted a total of 239 applications, including 196 that were deemed eligible and admissible for evaluation.

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The following table gives more information about the way the awardees are split into four different categories.

The selected projects are located in 15 EU Member States: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. There are also five projects in Norway.

The industries that will benefit from the financing include cement, steel, advanced biofuels, sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs), wind and solar power, as well as green hydrogen and its derivatives. More information about each selected scheme is available on the EC website.

The EC noted that in addition to the newly-selected 41 projects, “other promising but insufficiently mature projects” will get project development assistance from the European Investment Bank in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Financed by revenues from the auctioning of allowances from the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), the Innovation Fund has already held two large-scale calls in which it award EUR 1.1 billion and EUR 1.8 billion in grants to seven and 16 projects, respectively. The fourth call is expected to be launched at the end of 2023 with an increased budget of EUR 4 billion.

(EUR 1.0 = USD 1.121)