Projects in Central and Southeast Europe won 16 of the 77 grants the European Commission awarded from its €3.4bn Innovation Fund on October 19.
The Commission said the 77 selected projects will share €3.4bn and are spread across 23 countries of the European Economic Area. Together they could avoid around 290mn tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in their first decade of operation, roughly a tonne of CO2 every second. The grants are paid from the revenues of the EU Emissions Trading System.
The list shows how far the money still flows west. France hosts 16 projects, and Germany, Spain and the Netherlands eight each. In the Central and Southeast Europe region, Hungary, Latvia and Romania lead with two projects each. Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland have one apiece, and Slovakia and Slovenia have none.
Competition was fierce. The call drew 358 applications seeking €17.5bn, against a budget of €2.9bn, and every one of its five topics was oversubscribed. A further 84 projects passed evaluation but will not be funded; they get the EU's STEP quality seal to help them raise money elsewhere.
Several of the eastern winners are in the supply chains Brussels is trying to build. In Estonia, Neo Performance Materials is to build a line making up to 3,000 tonnes a year of rare-earth permanent magnets, which it says will avoid more than 3.4mn tonnes of CO2-equivalent in ten years. LG Energy Solution's Polish unit in Wroclaw won support for a 9 GWh-a-year line making lithium iron phosphate battery cells for electric vehicles.
In Bulgaria, copper products maker Sofia Med plans a large copper recycling plant in Sofia producing high-purity metal, avoiding about 1.16mn tonnes of CO2-equivalent over ten years. The company already borrowed €20mn from the EBRD in March on terms tied to raising its use of recycled copper. Lithuania's Refinis will build a plant to recycle and refine platinum-group metals, one of six critical raw materials projects on the list.
Croatia's Koncar, the electrical equipment maker whose market value topped €3bn this month, won funding for a Zagreb production line for a 2.5 MW power platform converting medium-voltage current to DC. In Hungary, CAADEX will make industrial heat pumps, and Bosch is developing a heat-pump-based system to improve electric vehicle battery performance across sites in Hungary and Romania.
In Latvia, Swedish company Cemvision plans a plant in Ventspils making up to 500,000 tonnes a year of ultra-low-carbon cement, which it says will avoid more than 3.1mn tonnes of CO2-equivalent in ten years, while state utility Latvenergo is piloting a 2 MW high-pressure electrolyser for hydrogen. Romania's Calamearic will make tiles from recycled minerals at low temperature using electricity.
Greece's three projects include a 45 MW floating offshore wind farm in the Aegean planned by Terna Energy, a microgrid on Crete built around a 400 MWh solid-flow battery, and an electrified line at Heracles General Cement producing calcined clay to replace clinker. In Prague, ComPon Praha is building a floating thermal platform to supply heat and cooling to the city's district networks.
"These projects show that Europe's innovators are turning climate ambition into industrial leadership," said Wopke Hoekstra, the EU's commissioner for climate, net zero and clean growth.
The winners now negotiate grant agreements with the EU's climate and infrastructure agency CINEA, with results due in 1Q27. The Innovation Fund, which expects about €40bn from the ETS over 2020-2030, now has around 320 projects and almost €17bn in grants committed. The next round opens in early December and will include a €1bn topic for clean tech manufacturing.