3 April 2025 – The European Commission’s Clean Industrial Deal was published on 26 February. This roadmap communication proposes to “launch a flagship Horizon Europe call of ca. EUR 600 million under the 2026-2027 work programme to support fit-for-deployment projects. This will aim at fostering synergies between the Framework Programme for R&I and the Innovation Fund, creating a pipeline of projects from R&I to deployment.” The call is expected to open in the last quarter of 2025.

EUREC, together with five other renewable energy federations and one storage association, welcomes this initiative to help to scale up clean tech sectors in Europe. At the same time, we see a risk that renewables and storage projects will be left at the margins, with the bulk of the call’s funding going to CCS and other low carbon technologies for heavy industry. This is already the case in the ETS Innovation Fund, where less than 5% of the funding awarded by the fund has gone to innovative renewable energy or storage demonstration projects.

The joint letter was sent to the European Commission on 3 April 2025.
You can read the letter here.