Horizon 2020

In the summer of 2011, the EC announced the future EU funding programme for research and innovation: "Horizon 2020 - the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation". It came into force on 1 January 2014, after the end of FP7 on 31 Dec 2013.

Recently, the new Horizon 2020 Work Programme in consideration of 2018-2020 (topics, dates, and budget) have been revised and updated.  The general introduction to the 2018-20 work programme for the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, essentially describes the context to this major investment. This includes the political drivers behind the setting of priorities, as well as the new features of this work programme, which are particularly aimed at improving the impact of research and innovation in the sector.

Horizon 2020 programme therefore contains an €80 billion budget, available until year 2020, concerning providing research and innovation funding for multi-national collaboration projects, as well as for individual researchers, and support to SMEs with a special funding instrument. All interested parties regarding calls under this program, may find opportunities by utilising the link found here:

https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/programmes/h2020.

Meeting the EU energy goals for 2020 and beyond will require continuous development and commercialisation of new generations of low carbon energy technologies and systems. First of-a-kind commercial demonstration projects are essential to show the technical and commercial viability at industrial scale of new generations of energy technologies. These actions are predominant in the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan roadmaps notably regarding wind energy, solar energy, sustainable bioenergy, CCS, storage etc. A key barrier to implementing first-of-a-kind demonstration projects is the lack of finance for high risk/return projects due to their pre-commercial development stage and the unproven nature of the technologies concerned at industrial scale.

This action aims to establish a sub-facility for making loans to first-of-a-kind demonstration projects in the field of energy or extending guarantees to financial intermediaries who will make such loans. The projects supported will aim to scale up technologies currently at Technology Reference Level (TRL) 6 to TRL 8.

The latest news and information on Horizon 2020 is included in the online Horizon Magazine.