Up to €216M per project to scale clean tech, funded by Europe's carbon market
EU Innovation Fund
Grant covering up to 60% of additional capital and operating costs (plus separate competitive auctions)
What is Innovation Fund?
The EU Innovation Fund is one of the world's largest funding programmes for demonstrating innovative low-carbon technologies, channelling around €38 billion between 2020 and 2030 directly from the revenues of Europe's carbon market, the Emissions Trading System (ETS) — the scheme that makes polluters pay for their greenhouse-gas emissions. It does not back lab science or early prototypes; it pays to build the first commercial-scale plants that decarbonise heavy industry, energy, hydrogen, carbon capture and clean-tech manufacturing. Grants cover up to 60% of the additional capital and operating costs of a project, and individual awards in the latest round ran from €1.8 million to €216 million. The flagship 2025 Net-Zero Technologies (NZT) call put €2.9 billion on the table across five topics; it closed on 23 April 2026 with 358 applications requesting €17.5 billion — six times the budget — and results are expected by October 2026. Separate auctions (the Hydrogen Bank and an industrial-heat auction) pay a fixed premium per unit of clean output rather than a grant.
- Grants of up to 60% of a project's additional capital and operating costs
- Individual awards from €1.8M to €216M in the latest signed round
- Funded by ETS carbon-market revenues, not the EU budget
- Five topics by project size, from €2.5M CAPEX up to above €100M
- Separate auctions (Hydrogen Bank, industrial heat) pay a fixed premium per unit of output
Is this for you?
This is built for a company — alone or in a consortium — that is ready to pour concrete on the first commercial-scale clean-industrial plant in Europe: a green-steel line, an e-fuels reactor, a carbon-capture retrofit, a gigafactory for heat pumps or electrolysers. If you have a technology that already works at pilot scale, a site, an engineering design, a cost estimate and a quantified tonnes-of-CO2-avoided story, this is for you. If you have a research idea, a TRL 4 prototype, or a software product with no physical decarbonisation footprint, look elsewhere — Horizon Europe, the EIC Pathfinder or the EIC Accelerator fit far better. The Innovation Fund pays to scale proven chemistry into a working factory, not to invent it.
Funding strands
The Fund's flagship strand, backing first-of-a-kind plants that cut emissions in heavy industry, energy and CO2 management. These are the cement, steel, refinery and carbon-capture megaprojects that the smaller strands cannot reach. In the IF24 call this topic carried €1.2 billion.
Projects with capital expenditure (CAPEX) above €100 million
A middle tier for innovative decarbonisation projects too large for the small-scale window but below the megaproject threshold. It lets industrial sites and clean-energy developers scale promising technology without competing head-on with billion-euro CCS schemes. IF24 allocated €200 million here, and the IF25 call raised this band by roughly half.
Projects with CAPEX between €20 million and €100 million
The entry rung for smaller, capital-light decarbonisation projects, lowering the barrier for SMEs and first deployments. Applications use a lighter template than the large-scale topic. The IF24 call set aside €100 million for this band.
Projects with CAPEX between €2.5 million and €20 million
A dedicated strand for building factories that make the components of the clean transition: electrolysers, wind-turbine parts, heat pumps, batteries and the equipment to recycle them. It is the Fund's answer to the Net-Zero Industry Act, keeping clean-tech supply chains on European soil. IF24 carried €700 million here, and IF25 increased it by about 43%.
Manufacturing of renewable-energy, storage, heat-pump and hydrogen components; CAPEX above €2.5 million
For deeply innovative, higher-risk projects that demonstrate breakthrough decarbonisation rather than mature deployment. Pilots must show at least a 75% relative cut in greenhouse-gas emissions against a conventional reference. IF24 set €200 million aside for this topic.
Deep-decarbonisation demonstrators achieving at least 75% relative GHG reduction; CAPEX above €2.5 million
A separate competitive-bidding instrument under the Fund that pays renewable-hydrogen producers a fixed premium per kilogram for up to ten years, rather than an upfront grant. The 2024 auction offered up to €1.2 billion; six winners signed grant agreements worth €270.6 million in total. The 2025 (IF25) auction, launched in December 2025, offered up to €1.3 billion and for the first time included electrolytic low-carbon hydrogen alongside renewable hydrogen.
Renewable (and, from 2025, low-carbon) hydrogen production, paid as a fixed premium per kg over 10 years
Who wins — funded examples
The honest picture
The numbers are sobering. The 2024 call drew 359 applications and selected 61 to enter grant preparation — a real success rate around 17%, and only 54 ultimately signed. The 2025 call closed even hotter: 358 applications requesting €17.5 billion against a €2.9 billion budget — demand outstripped supply roughly six-to-one, and results are expected by October 2026. So treat the headline grant size with realism: most applicants leave with nothing. The bar is brutal but specific. Winners do three things ruthlessly well — they prove a large, credible volume of GHG emissions avoided per euro of public money; they show genuine technological innovation beyond what is already commercial; and they demonstrate the project is genuinely shovel-ready (permits, financing, off-take, a costed engineering design). Most rejections are not bad ideas — they are good plants described as research projects, with hand-wavy CO2 maths and a maturity story that falls apart under due diligence. If your relative GHG avoidance per euro is weak, no amount of polish will save you.
Call history — demand versus budget
| Call | Budget | Applications | Funding requested | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IF23 (deadline Apr 2024) | €4.0B | 337 from 27 countries | — | 85 selected, €4.8B awarded; 83 signed (~25% success) |
| IF24 (deadline Apr 2025) | €2.4B | 359 from 28 countries | €21.7B (9× budget) | 61 selected; 54 signed for €2.7B, 6 more from reserve (~17% success) |
| IF25 (deadline Apr 2026) | €2.9B | 358 from 27 countries | €17.5B (6× budget) | Results due by October 2026 |
⚠ There is no resubmission limit — rejected projects routinely sharpen the business case and reapply to the next annual call, and reserve lists do get called: six IF24 reserve projects were invited to grant preparation in April 2026 after withdrawals freed up budget.