Deadline: 20-Apr-23
The European Commission (EC) is currently accepting applications for its Hydrogen-powered Aviation.
Scope
Hydrogen-powered commercial aviation is today on a promising path towards climate neutrality by 2050, with European industry setting 2035 as an expected date of entry into service of the first hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft. While the Horizon Europe Clean Hydrogen partnership focuses on the production side (e.g. developing new fuel cells and hydrogen storage technologies), the Clean Aviation partnership addresses the integration and demonstration of disruptive technologies, including ones on hydrogen-powered aviation and subsequent aircraft architectures. However, there is currently a clear research and innovation gap for the phase in-between. Most notably, this gap relates to the demonstration of hydrogen refuelling and supply from air transport ground infrastructures to the aircraft, with follow-on demonstrations of ground-based aircraft movements (e.g. taxiing). In particular, hydrogen refuelling entails significant operational issues, safety risks and other barriers (e.g. scalability) at both air transport ground infrastructure and aircraft levels. This has the potential to create a bottleneck for Europe to proceed on the path to climate neutrality, lower emissions and reducing Europe’s dependency on oil and fossil fuels, which are clear objectives of the Versailles Declaration and REPowerEU. At the same time, demonstration pilots of hydrogen-powered aircraft ground movements need to start urgently, in order to be able to achieve full operations of hydrogen-powered airplanes in the EU by 2035.
Funding Information
The check will normally be done for the coordinator if the requested grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:
- public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
- cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (lowvalue grant).
Expected Outcomes
Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
- Innovative ground-based refuelling and supply systems for liquid hydrogen at air transport ground infrastructures, with the potential to be up-scaled at system level by 2027.
- Transformative aircraft-based hydrogen refuelling technologies, with emphasis on safety, standardisation and scalability to various types of aircraft concepts (including Vertical Take Off and Landing aircraft (VTOL) and Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV)).
- Hydrogen-powered aircraft ground movements, demonstrated and scalable across airports of different sizes, locations and capacities in Europe.
- Comprehensive and validated liquid hydrogen demand and supply-matching models at air transport ground infrastructures in Europe and globally, towards a potential entry into service of hydrogen aircraft by 2035.
- New standards and certification procedures for the roll-out of the new technologies and solutions at large scale, in EU Member States/Associated countries and on the TEN-T network.
Eligibility Criteria
- To become a beneficiary, legal entities must be eligible for funding.
- To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions,
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States,
- countries associated to Horizon Europe;
- the following low- and middle-income countries.
For more information, visit European Commission.