22 December 2025. After its release, EUREC has taken a closer look at the Work Programme 2026-27, particularly ‘Cluster 5 Destination 3’ (Cluster 5 = the ‘Climate, Energy & Mobility’; Destination 3 = “Sustainable, secure and competitive energy supply”). Here’s what the new Work Programme signals.
Higher-TRL research dominating
The two main kinds of Horizon Europe funding instrument for C5 D3 are ‘Innovation Actions’ and ‘Research and Innovation Actions’. Innovation Actions (IA) typically require a technology to get to TRL 7-8 and demand greater involvement of industry partners. The ‘exploitation strategy’ of an IA project aims at seeing the developed technology ultimately put on the market, probably by one of the consortium members. Research and Innovation Actions (RIA) typically require a technology to get to TRL 4-6 and have more public sector researchers; exploitation is more often about publishing in journals / producing freely-available non-commercial outputs (such as a tool or database).
The Work Programme indicates that the focus has now shifted towards IA. In 2027, RIA spending will drop to 0. Funding of IAs was very dominant before the Clean Industrial Deal era, too, in 2023, because of Next Gen EU’s contribution to Horizon Europe. The distinction between IAs and RIAs will be erased in Horizon Europe 2028-34, so this drop to 0 could be a prelude to the merge. This suggests that the future single instrument could have more IA character than RIA. As EUREC Secretary General Greg Arrowsmith was quoted in Science Business, “We don’t approve of a one-sided innovation policy that stakes everything on close-to-market research”. Instead, Europe’s industry should be supported by more “speculative” work that could lead to higher future rewards.’
‘Clean Industrial Deal’ call
The Clean Industrial Deal was published on 11 December, including a budget of 540 M EUR (down from the initial 600 M EUR promised). The cuts have mainly come in the ‘industrial decarbonisation’ compartment; ‘clean technology’ will get 150 M EUR in 2026 and 140 M EUR in 2027. The projects will be large: the Commission suggests EU contributions of 15-25 M EUR per project.
Some important features of the CID call to highlight:
- Freedom to bidders in the topic they want to pursue
- “Proposals are expected to include a clear go/no go moment ahead of the contracting and demonstration phase.” – this has been a feature of some D3 Innovation Actions, but never systematically
- The business plan and a ‘market readiness strategy’ must be handed in with the funding proposal
- Unclear if there is any requirement for technology development in the call text. The “innovative technology” is assumed to be available. With this project, its roll-out will now begin.
Cluster 5 Destination 3 Work programme 2026-27 topics
The wind sector’s only funding is 93.5 M EUR to “manage as it sees fit” (D3-03) – cascade funding-, although it’s not the co-programmed European Partnerships. Photovoltaics has a higher budget: 160 M EUR over several projects, all identified by stakeholders via their co-programmed partnership EUPI-PV.
Cascade funding means that a project distributes funding to entities that are identified neither in the proposal or Grant Agreement and that won’t be mere suppliers, the rare projects that offer it are said to give ‘Financial Support to Third Parties’ – FSTP. The last FSTP project in wind energy, with a budget a tenth of this one, was IRPWind (2014-18) and it was not widely thought to be a success. FSTP implies the administration of funding must be done by resources within the project, so less than the full 93 M EUR will be available for research work.
Co-programmed partnerships are popular with the sectors that get to have one. But there is a chance this might be the first and only Work Programme EUPV-PI inputs to because of a change of policy in the Commission. It proposes, in Horizon Europe 2028-34 to substantially reform ‘European partnerships’ to push Member State money, along with their influence, into them. If/when that happens, stakeholders’ power to set topics will be weakened. Also, the European Commission intends to fuse partnerships, which would also impact EUPI-PV’s current independent existence.