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Overview
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.
The numbers are sobering.
Is this for you?
- Capital project cutting CO₂, located in the EU, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein
- Single applicant or consortium — both fine; company size irrelevant
- Technology proven and ready for first-of-a-kind commercial scale (a separate pilots topic takes less mature tech)
- Capex from €2.5M (small-scale) up to €100M+ (large-scale), plus cleantech manufacturing plants
- Energy-intensive industry, renewables, storage, hydrogen, CCUS (carbon capture, use and storage), net-zero mobility and buildings
- Pre-revenue startup needing money to develop the tech itself → EIC Accelerator
- Lab or research-stage idea → Horizon Europe / EIC Pathfinder
- Roll-out of off-the-shelf kit (a standard wind or solar farm) — not innovative enough → national support schemes or EIB lending
- Renewable hydrogen or industrial heat producer wanting a fixed premium per unit → the Innovation Fund's own auctions (European Hydrogen Bank, heat auction), a separate door with separate deadlines
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.
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. 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.
Renewable (and, from 2025, low-carbon) hydrogen production, paid as a fixed premium per kg over 10 years
Success rates — the honest picture
Roughly 1 in 6 applications gets funded. A sharp, evidence-backed proposal is what separates the funded from the rejected.
| 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 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: twelve IF24 reserve projects were invited to grant preparation across two waves (March 24 and April 20, 2026) after withdrawals freed up budget.
Eligibility
- 1Open to any legal entity — single company or consortium — established in an EU Member State, Iceland or Norway (the EEA EFTA states inside the ETS).
- 2The project must deploy highly innovative low-carbon technologies that are not yet commercially available but are mature enough to build at scale: commercial demonstration, not research.
- 3Maturity spans roughly TRL 6-9 — pilots at TRL 6-7, and the small/medium/large/clean-tech-manufacturing topics at commercial-demonstration maturity (TRL 8+).
- 4Eligible sectors include energy-intensive industries, renewable energy, energy storage, carbon capture/use/storage (CCS/CCU) and clean-tech manufacturing for renewables, storage, heat pumps and hydrogen.
- 5The project must deliver significant, quantifiable greenhouse-gas emission reductions versus a credible conventional baseline — the most heavily scrutinised number in the whole application.
- 6Capital expenditure must meet the topic threshold: above €100M (large-scale), €20M-100M (medium), €2.5M-20M (small), and above €2.5M (clean-tech manufacturing and pilots).
- 7Proposals are scored on five award criteria: GHG-avoidance effectiveness, degree of innovation, project maturity, replicability and cost efficiency.
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.
Where you need to be
Your project should sit at TRL 6–9 when you apply. The eligible band is highlighted below.
- 1Basic principles observedThe core scientific idea is written down, but nothing has been built or tested.
- 2Technology concept formulatedA practical application for the idea is proposed, still purely on paper.
- 3Experimental proof of conceptEarly lab experiments show the key principle can actually work.
- 4Technology validated in labThe pieces are assembled and shown to work together under lab conditions.
- 5Technology validated in relevant environmentThe technology is tested in conditions close to the real world.
- 6Technology demonstrated in relevant environmentA working prototype is demonstrated in a realistic setting.
- 7System prototype demonstration in operational environmentA near-final system runs in the actual operating environment.
- 8System complete and qualifiedThe technology is finished, tested and proven to work as intended.
- 9Actual system proven in operational environmentThe technology is fully commercial and running at scale day to day.
The money — ETS-funded grants up to 60%
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.
How to apply — step by step
- 1Register your organisation and prepare the proposal3-6 months to prepare
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.
- 2Submit a single-stage proposal on the Funding & Tenders PortalIF25 NZT closed 23 Apr 2026 — IF26 regular grants expected ~Dec 2026
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 regular grants call is open as of July 2026. Based on the annual pattern (IF24 launched December 2024, IF25 launched December 2025) and a Commission stakeholder consultation on IF26 call design held in June 2026, IF26 is expected to open around December 2026. Check the Innovation Fund calls page for the confirmed date before preparing a submission.
- 3Admissibility, eligibility and capacity checkspart of Apr-Sep 2026 evaluation
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.
- 4Expert evaluation against the award criteria (cascade)Apr-Sep 2026
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.
- 5Grant preparation and signatureresults Oct-Nov 2026; GA signature Nov 2026-Mar 2027 (time-to-grant ~11 months)
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.
What evaluators look for
Degree of innovation
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.
- Innovation relative to the state of the art (15 pts)
GHG emission avoidance potential
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.
- Absolute GHG emission avoidance (2 pts)
- Relative GHG emission avoidance (5 pts)
- Quality of the GHG calculation and minimum requirements (≥3/5)
Project maturity
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.
- Technical maturity (≥3/5)
- Financial maturity (≥3/5)
- Operational maturity (≥3/5)
Cost efficiency
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.
- Cost efficiency ratio (12 pts)
- Quality of the cost calculation and minimum requirements (≥1.5/3)
Replicability
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).
- Replicability in efficiency gains and multiple environmental impacts (5 pts)
- Contribution to Europe's industrial leadership and competitiveness (≥4/10)
Documents you'll need
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 documentTypical Budget Breakdown
2026 Deadlines
- 4 Dec 20254 Dec 2025IF25 Net-Zero Technologies call opens
Single-stage call worth €2.9bn across five topics (large/medium/small-scale, pilots, clean-tech manufacturing), submitted via the EU Funding & Tenders Portal.
- 23 Apr 202623 Apr 2026Submission deadline (17:00 Brussels)
Round closed with 358 applications from 27 EEA countries requesting €17.5bn — six times the budget. Part B capped at 70 pages; feasibility study and business plan at 60 pages each.
- Apr–Oct 2026Apr–Oct 2026Evaluation window (running now)
Admissibility and eligibility checks by the Commission, then external experts score five criteria: degree of innovation, greenhouse-gas avoidance, maturity, replicability and cost efficiency.
- Oct 2026Oct 2026Evaluation results communicated
Winners invited to grant preparation; above-threshold non-winners get the STEP (Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform) Seal and may be offered European Investment Bank project development assistance or national grants-as-a-service funding.
- Nov 2026 – Mar 2027Nov 2026 – Mar 2027Grant agreement preparation and signature
Time-to-grant runs up to 11 months from deadline — officially longer than the standard 9 — given the volume and size of projects. Legal entity validation, financial capacity checks and bank account validation happen here.
- After signatureAfter signatureFirst money — but no pre-financing
Unusually for EU grants, there is no pre-financing payment. Interim payments of up to 40% of the grant flow against reporting periods before financial close; the remaining 60%+ after, with generally at least 10% held until after entry into operation.
- T+4 years after signatureT+4 years after signatureFinancial close deadline
Projects must reach financial close within four years of grant signature or face termination; then operate 3 years (pilots/small-scale) or 5 years (other topics) for greenhouse-gas monitoring.
After you're funded
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, 8 withdrew before or after signing, and only 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.
Practical notes
Unlike Horizon Europe, the Innovation Fund funds individual projects, not multi-partner consortia, so there is no partner-search or brokerage step: a single project owner (or the company building the plant) applies directly. Submission is single-stage via the EU Funding & Tenders Portal — for the IF25 Net-Zero Technologies call (€2.9bn budget) the deadline was 23 April 2026, 17:00 CEST. This means your effort goes entirely into your own GHG-avoidance numbers and financial maturity, not into wrangling academic/SME partners.
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.
Who's been funded
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.
Key Features
Official links & resources
- Innovation Fund — CINEA programme page
- What is the Innovation Fund? (DG Climate Action)
- All calls for proposals (grants and auctions)
- IF25 Net-Zero Technologies call (CINEA)
- Funding & Tenders Portal — Innovation Fund
- Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/856 — relevant costs and disbursement rules
- IF24 call results
- IF23 call results
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Grants cover up to 60% of the additional capital and operating costs — the extra cost of the clean option versus a conventional plant — not 60% of the entire project budget.
Any legal entity, alone or in a consortium, established in an EU Member State, Iceland or Norway. There is no SME-only restriction — large industrials, utilities and dedicated project companies all compete in the same calls.
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 by October 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.
Related Programmes
STEP Platform
EIC STEP Scale Up: €10-30m per company (equity only); EIC STEP Defence Scale Up: €10-30m per company (equity only, deadline 28 Oct 2026)
View programme →Chips JU
€10M-50M per call (project shares vary by consortium)
View programme →Horizon Cluster 5
Open call budgets of €223M and €263M; per-project grants are set per topic (commonly several million euros for large RIA/IA projects)
View programme →EIC Accelerator
Up to €12.5M blended (up to €30M equity-only via STEP Scale-Up)
View programme →InvestEU
Around €400bn already mobilised across the EU economy (2021-2026)
View programme →Explore Further
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