New Executive Agency for Innovation Fund

INEA, the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency, ceased operations on 31 March 2021. The European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment executive agency (CINEA) was established on 1 April 2021 to take over its legacy portfolio as well as additional EU funding programs. CINEA´s preliminary timeline for next call for proposals for large scale projects in the Innovation Fund program is: opening in October 2021 and deadline for submissions in January 2022.

CINEA’s mission is to support stakeholders in delivering the European green deal through high-quality Program management. Innovation Fund is one of the programs under the section climate and environment.

INEA’s call for large-scale project proposals closed 29 october last year. The best ranked 70 projects have been invited to submit a full application for the second stage by 23 June 2021. This first call for large-scale projects makes available a total budget of €1 billion to invest in innovative, market-ready projects such as clean hydrogen or other low-carbon solutions for energy-intensive industries like steel, cement and chemicals, as well as projects in innovative renewables, energy storage and carbon capture, use and storage.

The information on the evaluation results from the second stage will be provided in the fourth quarter of 2021. Grants will be awarded at the end of 2021.

IMCG supports some very interesting projects in the second stage to submit a full proposal. It will be a couple of intensive weeks in May and June. On the 1:st of July IMCG will present our experiences from the work with proposals as well as some recommendations to applicants joining the next call.