European Union

Highlights in 2020
Highlights in 2020

Update on clean energy innovation policies and strategies

The European Green Deal is a set of policy initiatives by the European Commission with the overarching aim of reaching Europe’s climate neutrality by 2050, as well as the strategy for a sustainable recovery and growth. The European Green Deal makes consistent use of all policy levers: regulation and standardisation, investment and innovation, national reforms, dialogue with social partners and international cooperation.

The Commission has, over the past year, put forward initiatives under the Green Deal, among others, on energy systems integration, clean hydrogen, the renovation of buildings, offshore renewable energy and batteries. These strategies contain specific sections on promoting research and innovation.

The Commission will also increase its 2030 climate ambitions by cutting emissions by at least 55% compared to 1990, with a series of measures to put this vision into practice – the ‘Fit for 55’ package.

Major innovation initiatives and programmes in 2020/21

Stakeholders from EU Member States, and in most cases their international research and innovation partners, can benefit from funding through Horizon Europe, while larger-scale demonstration projects and early deployment projects may be funded through the Innovation Fund and Invest EU. Last year, the Green Deal call under Horizon 2020, with a total budget of €1 billion, addressed, among others, key energy and system integration challenges.  In this call, €403 million will be directed towards energy projects, including the production of offshore and onshore energy, support for large-scale electrolysers, and the use of clean energy in ports, airports, a carbon-neutral industry, and energy and resource efficient building and renovation.

Horizon Europe, the new EU research and innovation programme (2021-27) with a budget of around €95.5 billion, will devote at least 35% of these funds to climate action, enabling the transition to climate neutrality, including of the energy sector. For clean energy research and innovation up to €13 billion will be invested, which is a circa 50% increase in EU funding compared to the 2014-2020 period. These funds will target primarily European research and innovation cooperation, but will be – in most cases – opened to other countries. Novel funding instruments, such as EU Missions, a new set of public-private partnerships, and the European Innovation Council are designed to mobilise a wider range of actors in research and innovation, achieve greater impact and ensure that innovative solutions can be deployed more quickly.

In addition to Horizon Europe funds, devoted to research and innovation, EU budget will also support high TRL technologies through market pilots and demonstrators, seeking to create early markets for emerging technologies. The Innovation Fund will provide €10 billion until 2030 for the commercial demonstration of innovative low-carbon technologies.  The European Investment Bank has actually become the EU Climate Bank, committing to support €1 trillion of investments in climate action and environmental sustainability from now until 2030. High risk innovation projects will benefit from the EU budget guarantee under InvestEU. The innovative cleantech and energy projects are expected to be a sizeable part of these programmes’ portfolios and mobilise considerable interest among private investors.

Private sector engagement in 2020/21

Horizon Europe will see a wave of public-private partnerships in critical areas such as clean hydrogen and batteries. Horizon Europe will provide €1 billion in support for research and innovation through the so-called Clean Hydrogen Partnership as successor to the current Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking. In a similar vein, Horizon Europe has earmarked more than € 900 million to support the development of a new generation of sustainable, high-performing batteries through a first-of-its-kind dedicated public-private partnership on batteries.

Furthermore, the European Commission has established industrial alliances in the field of batteries and hydrogen. These alliances are an important tool to identify technology needs, investment opportunities and regulatory barriers and enablers at all stages of the value chain.

The Breakthrough Energy Europe fund invested into its first three companies.

Major activities in support of the Innovation Challenges in 2020/21

In IC1 (‘Smart Grids’), the European Commission contributed €28.5M to the joint actions of IC1 through the two calls of Smart Energy Systems ERA-NET and the third call that was directly launched by the EC and India.

In IC2 (‘Off-grid Access to Electricity’), the EC in 2019 and 2020 awards the RESponsible Island Prize of €1.7M to islands with innovative and sustainable local renewable energy production for electricity, heating, cooling and transport.

In IC3 (‘Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage’), the EC contributed through the ACT ERA-NET with the joint funding from United States, Canada and India. The EC issued three targeted international cooperation Horizon 2020 calls on CO2 Utilisation and CCUS in Industry, with MI countries. As a result, six funded projects include MI partners from Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, United Stated, Canada and Brazil.

In IC4 (‘Sustainable Biofuels’), the EC issued three targeted international cooperation calls, with Canada, USA-China and Japan. Overall EU invested about €25M of the H2020 budget in the year 2020 to the seven multilateral international projects resulting from those calls.

In IC5 (‘Converting Sunlight’), the EC continued its co-lead role and had developed a ‘Converting Sunlight into Solar Fuels and Chemicals Roadmap for 2020–2050’. To support this work, the EC funded a study on ‘Solar Fuels Research & Invest: Defining and Developing the Global Solar Fuel Value Chain: techno-economic analysis and pathways for sustainable implementation’.

In IC7 (‘Affordable Heating and Cooling of Buildings’), the EC continued its co-lead role, steering with UK and India the preparation of the concept for IC7 for its relaunch under Mission Innovation 2.0.

In IC8 (Renewable and Clean Hydrogen), the EC continued its co-lead role concentrating on the setting up of an online information sharing Hydrogen Valleys platform on hydrogen valley projects in MI countries (www.h2v.eu). The EU financed the platform with a €0.5 M contract through its Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking programme. The platform is fully operational since early 2021, and now presents 29 valleys in 19 countries with a total investment of almost EUR 30 billion.

Other Mission Innovation related activity in 2020/21

The 2020 (second) cohort of MI Champions was announced during a virtual ceremony hosted by the European Commission on June 12, 2020.

Public sector RD&D investment

New Collaborations

  • Collaborator: Canada
    • Name of collaboration
      • EUCANWin
    • Brief Description
      • European-Canadian partnership for climate-positive heat and power generation through improved biomass feedstock supply and innovative conversion technologies
    • Sectors
      • Public – private
    • Type of collaboration
      • Research and Development
    • Duration
      • 2021-2025
    • Funding amount
      • €5M EU, €0.36M Canada
    • Additional information
    • https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101022829

 

  • Collaborator: Canada
    • Name of collaboration
      • FlexSNG
    • Brief Description
      • Flexible Production of Synthetic Natural Gas and Biochar via Gasification of Biomass and Waste Feedstocks
    • Sectors
      • Public – private
    • Type of collaboration
      • Research and Development
    • Duration
      • 2021-2024
    • Funding amount
      • €2M EU, €0.25M Canada

 

  • Collaborator: USA, China
    • Name of collaboration
      • NEFERTITI
    • Brief Description
      • Innovative photocatalysts integrated in flow photoreactor systems for direct CO2 and H2O conversion into solar fuels
    • Sectors
      • Public – private
    • Type of collaboration
      • Research and Development
    • Duration
      • 2021-2025
    • Funding amount
      • €8M EU, €0.7M USA and China
    • Additional information

 

  • Collaborator: USA, China
    • Name of collaboration
      • METHASOL
    • Brief Description
      • International cooperation for selective conversion of CO2 into METHAnol under SOLar light
    • Sectors
      • Public – private
    • Type of collaboration
      • Research and Development
    • Duration
      • 2021-2024
    • Funding amount
      • €4M EU, €2M USA and China

 

  • Collaborator: Japan
    • Name of collaboration
      • LAURELIN
    • Brief Description
      • Selective CO2 conversion to renewable methanol through innovative heterogeneous catalyst systems optimised for advanced hydrogenation technologies (microwave, plasma and magnetic induction)
    • Sectors
      • Public – private
    • Type of collaboration
      • Research and Development
    • Duration
      • 2021-2025
    • Funding amount
      • €5M EU, €0.4M Japan
    • Additional information

 

  • Collaborator: Japan, Brazil
    • Name of collaboration
      • 4AirCRAFT
    • Brief Description
      • Air Carbon Recycling for Aviation Fuel Technology
    • Sectors
      • Public – private
    • Type of collaboration
      • Research and Development
    • Duration
      • 2021-2024
    • Funding amount
      • €2M EU, €0.7M Japan
    • Additional information

 

  • Collaborator: Japan, Switzerland
    • Name of collaboration
      • ORACLE
    • Brief Description
      • Novel Routes and catalysts for synthesis of Ammonia as alternative renewable fuel
    • Sectors
      • Public – private
    • Type of collaboration
      • Research and Development
    • Duration
      • 2021-2025
    • Funding amount
      • €5M EU, €0.4M Japan
    • Additional information

 

  • Collaborator: India
    • Name of collaboration
      • Joint Call 2020 (MICall20) on digital transformation for green energy transition
    • Brief Description
      • The aim is to support transnational research and innovation activities unleashing the potential of digital transformation for a sustainable energy society.
    • Sectors
      • Public – private
    • Type of collaboration
      • Research, development, and/or demonstration
    • Duration
      • 2021-2025
    • Funding amount
      • €10M EU
    • Additional information

 

  • Collaborator: India
    • Name of collaboration
      • Integrated local energy systems (Energy islands): International cooperation with India LC-SC3-ES-13-2020
    • Brief Description
      • To develop and demonstrate solutions which analyse and combine, in a well delimited system, all the energy vectors that are present and interconnect them, where appropriate, to optimise their joint operation that is demonstrated by an increased share of renewables in and higher energy efficiency of the local energy system.
    • Sectors
      • Public – private
    • Type of collaboration
      • Demonstration
    • Duration
      • 2021-2025
    • Funding amount
      • €9M EU
    • Additional information

 

  • Collaborator: India
    • Name of collaboration
      • Joint Call 2019 on Energy Storage Solutions
    • Brief Description
      • Focuses on the development of integrated storage systems and will support solutions answering to identified challenges within this area. It is highly encouraged to identify and involve “need-owners” in the solution development answering to the specified challenge
    • Sectors
      • Public – private
    • Type of collaboration
      • Research, development, and/or demonstration
    • Duration
      • 2020-2024
    • Funding amount
      • €9.5M EU
    • Additional information