ERA-NET Cofund actions supporting Joint Actions towards increasing energy efficiency in industry and services

Date de clôture : 15 sept. 2016  
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Topic Description

The challenge for the European industry is to develop a global technological leadership in energy efficiency solutions. The EU-funding alone will not be sufficient to ensure an increase in energy efficiency in the process industry by 20% in 2020 and to radically reduce the energy content of production, leading to more flexible, less costly manufacturing processes and for self-consumption. Therefore the Member States and Associated Countries are invited through this action to identify Joint Actions in this field, to implement joint activities, and to systemically address the non-technology barriers for wider uptake of energy efficiency.

The proposed ERA-NET action aims at development and launch of a joint call for proposals in the field of energy efficiency in Industry and Services. Proposals should pool the necessary financial resources from the participating national (or regional) research programmes with a view to implementing a joint call for proposals resulting in grants to third parties with EU co-funding in this area. The joint call should focus around a limited number of industrial sectors, not covered under SPIRE. The projects financed by the joint call should cover either industrial sectors with very energy intensive industrial processes or industrial sectors with large energy consumption due to their market presence, though their industrial processes are not highly energy intensive. Further, they should cover industrial sectors with innovative potential and willingness/readiness to implement energy efficiency measures at a meaningful scale. Finally, the size of the addressed industrial sectors in EU and/or their benefits for the EU economy need to be taken into account. The joint call should address Innovation Actions and include the elements related to persistent market barriers. Proposals should demonstrate how the proposed activities will be continued commercially beyond the project lifetime. Involvement of relevant multiplier organisations is encouraged. The ERA-NET action will be implemented according to the three reporting periods scheme.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of around EUR 5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

The ERA-NET action will indicate the specific impact resulting from the transnational nature of the action and the European added value. Deliverables of each of the projects financed by the joint call will be included in the reports of the ERA-NET action to the European Commission. The projects financed by the joint call are expected to demonstrate the impacts in terms of primary energy savings triggered by the project within its duration (in GWh/year per million Euro of EU funding). They are also expected to contribute to the objectives of the EU Energy Efficiency policies and initiatives. Finally, they will include ad-hoc indicators to measure the progress against specific objectives of their choice, which could be used to assess the progress during the ERA-NET action life time.