Supporting coordination of national R&D activities

Specific challenge:Without a technological shift in our current energy system, the EU will fail on its 2050 ambitions to largely decarbonise the energy and transport sectors. The EU needs to accelerate innovation in cutting edge low carbon technologies and innovative solutions, and bridge the gap between research and the market.  A European approach is essential to realise the ambition of seeing low carbon technologies effectively developed in view of bringing them to the market: it allows key players to come together on a continental scale; it helps to identify and to tackle the barriers holding back innovative products and services in the single market; and it allows different sources of private and public funding to be brought together. Today, EU funding remains a limited part of the overall funding across Europe. Implementation needs to be increasingly based on partnerships that build the necessary scale and scope, and achieve greater impact from scarce public and private resources. The challenge is to drive synchronisation of funding processes by fostering cross-border cooperation among partners supported by national projects and programmes.

Scope: As a pilot case, the scope will be on the areas and challenges targeted in this 'Competitive low-carbon energy' call. Research and Innovation activities in the proposals should focus on bringing technology solutions from TRL 3 to TRL 5 (please see part G of the General Annexes). Activities should focus on supporting either:

• The transfer of knowledge among participants and other dissemination activities, activities to foster the use of research outcomes by industry of a  project resulting from synchronised funding processes of at least three Member States, or
• The coordination of call for proposals of at least three Member States, for instance, through support to networking activities of public funding bodies, leading to the promotion of the use of single peer-reviewed evaluations, development and use of harmonised monitoring and review methodologies, support to the preparation of high risk, high cost large scale pilots for joint actions with or without EC funding, linking national research programmes and other funding mechanisms and building partnerships with the necessary scale and scope etc.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 0.1 to 0.5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected impact:

• Reinforcing the European dimension of multinational projects resulting from synchronised funding processes of at least three Member States,
• Increasing coordination and alignment of national research and innovation programmes, overcoming gaps, duplication and fragmentation, creating a leverage effect, enhancing coherence and efficiency of energy research in Europe.

Type of action: Coordination and Support Actions