Hydrogen plays a crucial role in achieving the European climate goals. That is why ‘Clean Hydrogen JU’ is allocating more than 300 million euros this year in the development and upscaling of ‘cutting-edge’ hydrogen technologies. The associated application round offers interesting opportunities for organizations working on innovations in this area.
About Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking
The ‘Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking’ is the name of an international partnership that aims to stimulate research and innovation in the hydrogen sector. It is part of ‘Horizon Europe’, and is the follow-up to the earlier ‘Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertakings’ (FCH JU) from FP7 and H2020 (FCH 2 JU).
Clean Hydrogen wants to allocate no less than 300.5 million euros this year for new innovations in this area. Interested parties will find more information in the (voluminous) Work Program 2022 and accompanying SRIA document. In short, this money will be distributed via a grant round (call for proposals) that started on 31 March 2022. From that day on, interested parties can submit project proposals for innovations in the field of hydrogen production, storage and distribution, end use (transport applications, heat and power generation), and related ‘horizontal’ themes such as safety, education and sustainability. The call for proposals also targets early stage research as well as the development, deployment and demonstration of hydrogen valleys. The best project proposals stand a chance of receiving substantial grants.
Target group and most important conditions
Submitting a project proposal with accompanying grant application is in principle possible for any party that is actively involved in innovations in the field of hydrogen. These can be parties from the EU member states, but also, for example, in countries that are ‘associated’ with Horizon Europe.
Unfortunately, we cannot go into detail about all the terms and conditions of this call in this article. We would like to mention a few important ‘generic’ conditions here. For example, a project should always:
- fit one of the official topics (mentioned below) and related special criteria
- be highly ambitious and go beyond the state of the art
- have a major impact beyond the immediate scope and duration of the project
- be carried out by an (international) consortium with an optimal composition
- be elaborated in a clear project plan.
Topics of the Clean Hydrogen call 2022
In order to be eligible for a grant, a project proposal must be in line with one of the official topics (topics) of this funding round (with code ‘HORIZON-JTI-CLEANH2-2022’). In total there are 41 topics. Submission is possible until 31 May or 20 September 2022. Which of the two deadlines applies depends on the subject of the proposal (see below).
Until 31 May 2022 (5:00 PM Brussels time), proposals can be submitted that relate to these 26 topics:
More topics Clean Hydrogen call 2022
Furthermore, the extended deadline of 20 September 2022 (5:00 PM Brussels time) applies to the submission of project proposals that relate to the following 15 topics:
What grant rates to expect?
The grant rates for clean hydrogen projects are determined per project and can, for example, reach up to 20 million euros for offshore demonstration projects or 25 million for large scale hydrogen valleys. For projects that are classified as an ‘Innovation Action’ (IA), Horizon Europe usually reimburses up to 70% of the project costs. This will often be the case for projects that focus on new or greatly improved products, processes or services (such as prototyping, tests, demonstrations and pilot projects). In other cases, Horizon Europe grants can even amount to 100% of the project costs: this applies in particular to projects in the form of a ‘Research and Innovation Action’ (RIA) or a ‘Coordination and Support Action’ (CSA). Our experts can of course tell you more about these categories.
Would you like to know more about these grants?
Is your company involved in innovations in the hydrogen sector, and do you have plans and long term ambitions that match the above topics? Our experts want to make the world a better place and will be happy to help clients with this same motivation to accelerate their innovation. We can support you with value adding services such as project scoping, consortium building, impact definition and maximisation, and of course grant application. Our support extends also to the project implementation phase with activities as management, communication and results exploitation.
EGEN has unique expertise in the field of hydrogen and other sustainable innovations, and has been involved in many dozens of projects in this area. Curious about what we can do for your innovation plans?
