Last month the EU announced its investment of over 1.8 Billion Euros into 17 large-scale cleantech projects from its third round of awards under the Innovation Fund.
This fund is to help bring breakthrough technologies to market to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The projects focus on energy-intensive industries, hydrogen, renewable energy, carbon capture and storage infrastructure, and the manufacturing of critical components for energy storage and renewables.
Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans said, "The Innovation Fund is an important tool to scale up innovations in renewable hydrogen and other solutions for European industry. Compared to the first disbursement round, the funds available have increased by 60%, enabling us to double the number of projects supported."
The projects selected in this funding round have the potential to save 136 million tonnes of C02eq over their first ten years of operation. The 17 projects were chosen as large-scale projects. This means that each project's capital cost exceeds 7.5 million and also has the maturity to go to deployment.
This round of funding comes from the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), which has a revenue of over 38 billion euros until 2030. The Innovation Fund aims to create financial incentives for businesses and public authorities to invest in low-carbon technologies.
In addition to the current grants, up to 20 additional projects considered promising, however not to the maturity required, will be pre-selected for project development assistance. These projects are set to be announced in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Cleantech Project Details
A German project will deploy a second-generation oxyfuel carbon capture process at a cement plant and provide it as raw material for further processing into synthetic methanol.
In Poland, they will create an end-to-end carbon capture and storage chain starting from CO₂ capture and liquefaction at a cement plant to storage in offshore sites.
Another project focused on cement will capture the CO₂emissions from exhaust gases produced during lime production and store them permanently in offshore geological formations in France.
One project will be the first full-chain carbon capture and storage project in Bulgaria, linking CO₂ capture facilities at a cement plant with permanent offshore storage in a depleted gas field in the Black Sea through an onshore and offshore pipeline system.
In Finland, a project will chemically recycle plastics to be used as a feedstock for refineries.
The second project in Finland will produce a new fibre from pulp to substitute polyester in textile applications.
In Sweden, the project will create a first-of-a-kind methanol plant converting CO₂, residue streams, renewable hydrogen and biogas to methanol.
In the Netherlands, one project will produce, distribute and use green hydrogen through an electrolyser supplied by offshore wind electricity. Another one will produce 15,500 tonnes of renewable hydrogen per year. The third one will process non-recyclable solid waste streams and transform them primarily into hydrogen.
In Norway, one project will build and operate the world's first commercial-scale drop-in biofuel production facility to convert forestry waste into advanced second-generation biofuels and biochar. While a project in Sweden will build a large-scale facility for the production of synthetic sustainable aviation fuel using CO₂ captured at a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant.
In Poland, a project will create a manufacturing plant of innovative electrochemical battery systems to provide short-term electricity storage.
Another project in the North of France will build a manufacturing plant for photovoltaics based on innovative heterojunction technology.
The third project in France will construct a Li-Ion recycling plant at the Dunkirk battery cluster for producing and refining black mass, providing access to a secondary source of battery raw material.
In the German part of the North Sea, a project will construct and operate an offshore windfarm to implement innovative solutions for turbines and hydrogen.
A project in Iceland will build a highly scalable onshore carbon mineral storage terminal with an estimated overall storage capacity of 880 million tonnes of CO₂.