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Up to 60% of relevant costs
Regular grants; auctions use different rules. Five IF26 routes are announced for December 2026; exact deadlines pending.Up to €216M per project to scale clean tech, funded by Europe's carbon market
AI-generated cover illustration. Programme details are sourced separately below.
Recorded editorial check · 25 days ago (1 Oct 2026)
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 October–November 2026. Five IF26 calls are confirmed for December 2026: the main NZT call, a new SME-specific call, a new Maritime call, the IF26 Industrial Heat Auction (final T&Cs published 24 September 2026, budget up to €1 billion, now includes nuclear/SMRs) and the IF26 Hydrogen Auction (budget up to €500 million). Separate auctions pay a fixed premium per unit of clean output rather than a grant.
The numbers are sobering.
Eligibility follows the project's location, not the applicant's size or sector. The EEA (European Economic Area) members Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein are in because they are in the EU's Emissions Trading System; the UK and Switzerland are out.
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. The IF25 NZT call allocates €1.2 billion to this topic.
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. The IF25 NZT call raised this band to €300 million — up 50% from €200 million in IF24.
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 IF25 NZT call allocates €100 million to 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. The IF25 NZT call allocates €1 billion here — a 43% increase over IF24's €700 million.
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. The IF25 NZT call allocates €300 million — up 50% from €200 million in IF24.
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. The 2026 (IF26) hydrogen auction (budget up to €500 million): public consultation closed 24 August 2026, a feedback webinar was held 8 September 2026, final Terms & Conditions not yet published; call expected December 2026. The IF26 Industrial Heat Auction (budget up to €1 billion) published its final Terms & Conditions on 24 September 2026 — eligibility expanded to industrial heat above 80°C and, for the first time, nuclear technologies including small modular reactors (SMRs); call expected to open early December 2026.
Renewable (and, from 2025, low-carbon) hydrogen production paid as a fixed premium per kg over 10 years; industrial heat above 80°C paid as a fixed premium per tonne CO₂ abated
This describes the stated cohort and evaluation stage, rather than the outcome of a future application.
| Call | Budget | Applications | Funding requested | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IF23 (deadline Apr 2024) | €4.0B | 337 from 27 countries | €24.6B (>6× budget) | 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; 12 reserve projects invited in two waves (March + April 2026) (~17% success) |
| IF25 (deadline Apr 2026) | €2.9B | 358 from 27 countries | €17.5B (6× budget) | Results expected Q4 2026 (October–November per CINEA timeline); evaluation ran April–September 2026. No announcement as of 11 October 2026; grant agreements expected Q1 2027. |
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: twelve IF24 reserve projects were invited to grant preparation across two waves (March 24 and April 20, 2026) after withdrawals freed up budget. Five IF26 calls — NZT grants, plus two new tracks (SME and Maritime), and the annual Heat and Hydrogen auctions — are expected to open December 2026.
Applicants can be legal entities — public or private — established in any country in the world, including the UK, Switzerland or the US. The hard gate is geography of deployment: the funded project must be located in an EU member state or an EEA (European Economic Area) country — Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein. For maritime projects, vessels must fly an EU/EEA flag and call at EU/EEA ports; ship or aircraft building outside the EU/EEA is excluded. Natural persons cannot apply, except sole traders whose business has no separate legal personality.
Only projects that have not reached financial close at the proposal submission date can be funded — the Innovation Fund backs first-of-a-kind deployment, not refinancing. After award the clock reverses: financial close must come within four years of grant signature, and the plant must operate for at least five years after entry into operation (three for pilots and small-scale projects) to satisfy the greenhouse-gas monitoring period.
Every private beneficiary requesting more than €60,000 is screened by the Central Validation Service on its latest closed accounts (profit-and-loss, balance sheet, external audit report), including dependency on EU funding and past deficits. An unsatisfactory verdict can trigger joint-and-several liability across the consortium, forced replacement of the entity — or rejection of the entire proposal. A risk worth pricing in for newly created project companies (SPVs) without trading history.
Entities under EU restrictive measures (Article 29 TEU / Article 215 TFEU sanctions) are barred in any capacity — beneficiary, affiliated entity, associated partner or subcontractor. Entities caught by the EU budget-conditionality regime are likewise excluded; currently that covers Hungarian public-interest trusts. Standard exclusion grounds (bankruptcy, unpaid tax or social security, fraud, grave professional misconduct) extend to beneficial owners and persons with decision-making power. EU bodies, except the Joint Research Centre, cannot join the consortium.
The grant is capped at 60% of relevant costs, a net figure computed with the Commission's mandatory calculator (broadly the extra cost of the innovative route versus a conventional reference plant, netting off operating benefits). Shortly before entry into operation an independent auditor re-certifies the calculation; if relevant costs have fallen, the grant is cut. And the full amount is only paid if the project delivers at least 75% of its planned greenhouse-gas avoidance — fail to enter operation and everything paid after financial close is recovered.
Single applicants are welcome — there is no consortium-composition requirement, a rarity among EU programmes. But the submitting party must hold a written mandate from all applicants at submission; proposals without full mandate are rejected outright. All beneficiaries and affiliated entities must be registered and validated in the Participant Register before submitting.
The planned IF26 SME call targets €2.5M–€20M capital expenditure. All members of an applying consortium must be SMEs. This describes planned eligibility, subject to the final call.
Regular grants can cover up to 60% of relevant costs; competitive bidding can support up to 100% under its own methodology. Neither figure is automatically a percentage of your entire corporate budget.
The planned NZT call excludes projects eligible for the dedicated SME or Maritime routes unless they are pilots. The Maritime route sets a €2.5M minimum capital expenditure. Final call publication can amend these planned conditions.
Your project should sit at TRL 6–9 when you apply. The eligible band is highlighted below.
The Innovation Fund is financed by auctioning EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) allowances — polluters pay for it, not the EU budget. Winners get a pure grant: no dilution, no repayment if the project performs. But the grant covers at most 60% of 'relevant costs', so you must bring the other 40-plus per cent — and everything outside the relevant-cost perimeter — from your balance sheet, banks or investors, and prove you can reach financial close within four years of signing.
For large projects, relevant costs are the additional capital expenditure compared with a conventional reference plant, plus the net present value of operating cost differences over ten years of operation (set out in Delegated Regulation 2019/856). A €300M plant whose conventional rival would cost €200M has far less than €300M of relevant costs. For small-scale projects the rule is kinder: relevant costs equal total capital expenditure.
Up to 40% of the grant can be paid out before the plant is running, against pre-defined milestones including financial close. The remaining 60% is released only against greenhouse-gas emission avoidance verified through annual reports for three to ten years after entry into operation. Deliver less CO₂ avoidance than promised and the performance-linked portion is clawed back pro-rata.
Alongside the annual Net-Zero Technologies grant call, the Fund runs competitive auctions — the European Hydrogen Bank for renewable hydrogen and, since 2025, a heat auction — which pay a fixed premium per unit produced to the lowest bidders. The 2025 auctions attracted almost €10 billion in bids. Auctions have tighter deadlines to financial close (around two to two-and-a-half years) than grant projects.
The IF26 pages describe forthcoming routes. Do not apply closed IF25 page limits, templates or payment details automatically to the new calls.
Create an EU Login account and register your organisation in the Participant Register to obtain a 9-digit Participant Identification Code (PIC). In parallel, model your project against the official GHG emission avoidance calculator and relevant-cost methodology, and assemble the business plan and financial documentation that prove the project is mature. No one scores this step; it is the gate to submission.
Submit one proposal per topic entirely online (paper is not accepted) in four parts: Part A (administrative + summarised budget, filled online), Part B (the technical description, a mandatory Word template uploaded as PDF), Part C (additional project data online), and annexes including the GHG calculator and business plan. The Innovation Fund uses one-stage submission with one-step evaluation. The 2025 Net-Zero Technologies call closed on 23 April 2026 and attracted 358 applications requesting a combined €17.5 billion against an available budget of €2.9 billion — confirming very high oversubscription. Results are expected October 2026, with grant agreements following in Q1 2027. No IF26 call is open as of October 2026 — the Commission confirms calls typically open at the end of the year. Five IF26 call types are confirmed for December 2026: IF26 NZT (Net-Zero Technologies regular grants), IF26 SME Call (new — first dedicated SME strand), IF26 Maritime Call (new — maritime sector decarbonisation), IF26 Heat Auction (~€1 billion, second round), and IF26 Hydrogen Auction (~€500 million). Regular grant submission deadlines will likely fall around April 2027, following the IF25 pattern. Check the Innovation Fund calls page for confirmed launch dates before preparing a submission.
CINEA screens each proposal for formal admissibility and eligibility (page limits, mandatory documents, eligible participants and activities) and checks financial and operational capacity plus exclusion grounds. Proposals that fail these formal checks are rejected before scoring and never reach the expert evaluation.
An evaluation committee composed entirely of independent outside experts scores admissible proposals against five award criteria, applied as a cascade: Degree of innovation first (fail and scoring stops), then GHG emission avoidance potential and Project maturity, then Cost efficiency, then Replicability and bonus points. Proposals are ranked by total score within their topic; ties are broken by geographic spread and sector priority rules.
Top-ranked proposals within budget receive an invitation to grant preparation — a dialogue with CINEA to fine-tune technical and financial aspects and address committee recommendations — but this is not yet a funding commitment; legal-entity validation, financial-capacity and exclusion checks still apply. Proposals above threshold but outside budget go on a reserve list or receive the STEP Seal; many are offered EIB Project Development Assistance. Grant agreement signature follows.
How far the project goes beyond incremental innovation, from intermediate to breakthrough, against the European state of the art. Evaluated first — score below threshold and the rest of the proposal is not scored at all.
How much greenhouse gas the project avoids over 10 years of operation, in absolute and relative terms, plus the credibility of the calculation. Minimum requirements include relative avoidance of at least 50% (75% for pilots) and process emissions below the applicable EU ETS benchmark.
Whether the project is sufficiently ready in technical, financial and operational terms — planning, business model, financing structure and permitting. Failing any one of the three sub-criteria stops the evaluation.
Grant requested per tonne of CO2 avoided (the cost-efficiency ratio, up to 12 points) plus the soundness of the relevant-cost calculation. A weak cost calculation halts the cascade.
Potential for efficiency gains and multiple environmental impacts beyond the project, plus — newly weighted — the project's contribution to Europe's industrial leadership and competitiveness (European value creation, knowledge retention, research collaboration, supply-chain diversification).
Official open, future and past calls; currently no open calls and five planned December 2026 routes.
Planned €200M SME-only route for projects with €2.5M–€20M capital expenditure; indicative two-round calendar.
Planned route and project categories; final call will define application artefacts and funding details.
First-of-a-kind low-carbon maritime technologies; planned call design.
Planned €1B auction and links to its terms and consultation material.
Planned €500M auction for renewable and electrolytic low-carbon hydrogen; draft/final terms distinguished.
Regular-grant and auction financing rates, assessment criteria and project support.
The master call document: objectives, topics, budget, timetable, admissibility, eligibility, the full evaluation and award procedure, and the scored award criteria — read this first and cover to cover.
View documentOfficial European Commission overview of the Innovation Fund, its ETS funding source and links to all current calls and the project portfolio.
View documentThe managing agency's call page with the deadline, budget, info-day materials, FAQ/Q&A document, tutorials and the link into the Funding & Tenders Portal submission system.
View documentThe mandatory methodology behind the GHG calculator; the relative-avoidance and quality sub-criteria are pass/fail gates, so model your numbers strictly to this.
View documentHow to register an organisation, obtain a PIC, and submit Parts A/B/C plus annexes electronically — the only accepted submission route.
View documentPreparation event, not an application deadline.
Net-Zero Technologies, SME, Maritime, Heat Auction and Hydrogen Auction; exact dates pending.
Do not treat this as a confirmed day or submission time.
Issuer’s planning timetable.
Final call publication controls.
Exact day and time pending.
Second-round signatures planned January–June 2028.
Month-level planning dates; exact day and time are not yet asserted.
Selection starts months of grant agreement preparation (GAP) with CINEA, the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency that runs the Fund. It is survivable but not automatic: of IF23's 85 selected projects, 2 withdrew before signing, and 83 were ultimately supported.
Grant projects must reach financial close within four years of signature, with credible interim milestones that CINEA monitors throughout the development phase. Auction winners face tighter clocks: roughly two years for heat projects and two-and-a-half for hydrogen. Miss the milestones and the agreement can be terminated.
Up to 40% of the grant arrives against pre-operation milestones; the rest is paid only against independently verified greenhouse-gas avoidance, reported annually for three to ten years after the plant starts up. Under-deliver on the promised CO₂ numbers and the performance-linked money is repaid pro-rata.
Beneficiaries must publicly share lessons learned through the Fund’s knowledge-sharing framework and follow EU visibility rules — your project details, avoided-emissions figures and selected know-how become public goods, by design.
High-scoring projects receive the STEP (Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform) Sovereignty Seal — including strong projects the budget could not stretch to. From IF23, 85 funded and 39 unfunded projects got the seal, a quality label meant to unlock other EU, national and private financing.
The Innovation Fund can support one project owner or a consortium. For the planned SME route every consortium member must be an SME. Select the call before deciding project structure, co-financing and the application package.
The Fund runs a dedicated National Contact Point network (separate from Horizon's NCPs), published on climate.ec.europa.eu. Their distinctive value is advising on how an Innovation Fund grant interacts with national funding instruments and other EU programmes — i.e. how to stack or avoid double-funding conflicts with your national climate/industry schemes. For everything call-specific (forms, eligibility, deadlines), the official channel is instead the Innovation Fund Helpdesk inside the Funding & Tenders Portal.
The European Investment Bank runs Project Development Assistance (PDA) free of charge to promoters, providing due-diligence, feasibility, business-planning and capital-structuring support to make a project bankable. Crucially, it is explicitly aimed at projects that applied but were NOT awarded a grant (as well as those still maturing) — so a near-miss is a route in, not a dead end. It is first-come-first-served with geographic/sectoral balancing, EU + Iceland/Liechtenstein/Norway only, and excludes projects currently under evaluation or already holding an IF grant. Note the 90-day rule: no reply within 90 days means you were not selected for that round.
Projects are scored on five criteria (GHG emission avoidance, degree of innovation, project maturity, scalability, and cost efficiency), and cost efficiency — effectively the grant requested per tonne of CO2 avoided — is a primary ranking lever, so a technically brilliant project can still lose on price. CINEA provides a free Self-Check questionnaire to test fit before applying, plus video tutorials covering the application, the financial forms and the GHG-avoidance calculation for each project category, and a downloadable Q&A document. The Info Day is held online (CINEA + DG CLIMA) a few days after each call launches — attend it for the current-round nuances and live Q&A.
An open-access offshore CO2 storage scheme that lets captured emissions from many industrial sources be shipped and injected into a reservoir about 100 km off Egersund, Norway.
One of Europe's first full onshore carbon capture and storage value chains, built by Aalborg Portland and Air Liquide to avoid about 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year from a cement plant.
A Cemex and Linde project capturing roughly 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 a year from a cement site using a cryogenic-adsorptive process.
A 200 MW renewable-hydrogen plant by Koppö Energia, the largest grant in the 2024 hydrogen auction, paid as a fixed premium per kilogram of hydrogen produced.
A Holcim carbon capture and storage project at its Martres-Tolosane cement plant in southern France, one of several cement-sector winners in the round.
Not the EU budget. The Innovation Fund is financed by revenues from auctioning allowances under the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), so the total over 2020-2030 — around €38 billion — depends on the carbon price.
Regular grants support up to 60% of relevant costs; competitive bidding can support up to 100% under the auction methodology. Relevant costs are calculated under the individual call and are not automatically the whole project budget.
Public or private project promoters can apply alone or in a consortium where the selected call allows it. The planned IF26 SME call requires SMEs, including every consortium member; larger companies must use an appropriate other route. Check the call’s project-location and entity requirements.
Not really. It funds first-of-a-kind commercial demonstration of technologies that already work at pilot scale but are not yet commercially deployed — roughly TRL 6-9, with pilots at the lower end (TRL 6-7) and most topics expecting TRL 8+. For research and prototypes, use Horizon Europe or the EIC.
In the 2024 call, 61 of 359 applications were selected — about 17%. The 2025 call, closed on 23 April 2026, drew 358 applications requesting €17.5 billion against a €2.9 billion budget — demand exceeded supply roughly six-to-one. Results are expected October–November 2026.
Auctions — the Hydrogen Bank for renewable hydrogen and a separate industrial-heat auction — pay a fixed premium per unit of clean output rather than a lump-sum capital grant. You bid the lowest premium you need to make the project viable.
Selected projects enter grant agreement preparation and typically sign roughly 9-12 months after the call deadline, with payments then released against agreed project milestones.
No call is currently open. Five IF26 routes are planned for December 2026. SME cut-offs are provisionally end-March and end-September 2027; the exact dates and final forms have not yet been published.
Official-source review of current calls, decision facts, selected topic budgets, application artefacts and access restrictions. Existing rich material is preserved where not superseded; this is not a full re-verification of every historical statement. Follow-up reconciliation of normalized root metadata and the Cluster 4 hero facts against this scoped research; unsupported generic numeric ranges and totals are intentionally null.
Research updated: 2026-10-12
Official call documents take precedence. A listed reference is not necessarily indexed in full by the AI.
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Platform / Seal€10M–30M equity per company
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Collaborative R&DGrant size depends on the topic
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CollaborativeGrants set by each topic
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BlendedGrant below €2.5M + up to €10M equity
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GuaranteeLoans & equity via intermediaries
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