Driving Green Energy Transition With Innovation Fund Projects
On 9 April 2024, the 4th call of the EU Innovation Fund closed, with a record budget of €4 billion to subsidies European decarbonisation projects.
In addition, the first call of the Hydrogen Pilot Auction, under the Innovation Fund umbrella, was successfully completed (deadline for submission was on 8 February), making €800 million of direct funding for RFNBO hydrogen projects available. Both programmes are key instruments to combine climate imperatives with economic opportunities – a top priority of the European Commission.
We Bring Innovative Ideas to Life to Secure a Better And More Sustainable Future
Therefore, the EU Innovation Fund is a strategic programme for Nordic Innovators and we have assisted clients' project applications to this programme since 2021.
We have seen significant and growing interest from clients for the financing possibilities offered by the EU Innovation Fund and have subsequently increased our team of expert consultants (technical and financial).
Assistance to Our Clients
During the last 6-8 months our growing team of expert consultants have guided clients through all steps of the proposal preparation including:
- Early-stage viability assessments
- Full-scale proposal scoping and development
- GHG calculations
- Detailed financial modelling
- Finetuning/quality control iterations.
High-quality Proposal Submissions
The result of this outstanding team effort is reflected by high-quality proposal submissions in 2024 that target over 85 million tones of CO2e savings over a period of 10 years. To put this into context, a country like Denmark emits 29 million tones of CO2 annually. Hence, Nordic Innovators can create impact! To accelerate these projects’ roll-out, Nordic Innovators’ clients have requested €1.45 billion in grants from the European Commission.
Next steps
In the coming months, the submitted EU Innovation Fund projects will be evaluated by independent experts and ranked according to the scores received. The final results will probably be issued by October/November 2024. In the meantime, Nordic Innovators will support several clients in finetuning their investor decks and mature discussions with other financial stakeholders through our spin-off Nordic Innovators Corporate Finance.
Dr. Félix Urbain, Partner and Leader of the Team: “I am very grateful for all the efforts and the responsibility taken by our Innovation Fund team. Their commitment to quality, professionalism and trust in collaborating colleagues is outstanding. Fingers crossed that our submitted high-impact proposals get the deserved positive evaluation so the projects can contribute to the EU climate goals and a more sustainable future in Europe.”