Call for Proposals: LIFE Clean Energy Transition

Deadline: 19-Sep-2024

The European Commission is pleased to announce a call for proposals for EU action grants in the field of Clean Energy Transition under the Programme for Environment and Climate Action (LIFE).

Topics

• The call covers the following topics:
  • LIFE-2024-CET-LOCAL: Clean energy transition plans and strategies in municipalities and regions
  • LIFE-2024-CET-POLICY: Towards an effective implementation of key legislation in the field of sustainable energy
  • LIFE-2024-CET-PRODUCTS: Real world energy consumption of energy related products
  • LIFE-2024-CET-BETTERRENO: Energy Performance of Buildings – Making renovation faster, deeper, smarter, service- and data-driven
  • LIFE-2024-CET-BUSINESS: Supporting the clean energy transition of European businesses
  • LIFE-2024-CET-BUILDSKILLS: BUILD UP Skills – Upskilling and reskilling interventions for building decarbonisation
  • LIFE-2024-CET-HEATPUMPS: Supporting the roll-out of high-quality heat pump installations
  • LIFE-2024-CET-DHC: Supporting district heating and cooling
  • LIFE-2024-CET-PRIVAFIN: Crowding in private finance
  • LIFE-2024-CET-OSS: One-Stop-Shops – Integrated services for clean energy transition in buildings and businesses
  • LIFE-2024-CET-RENOPUB: Facilitation structures for the renovation of public buildings
  • LIFE-2024-CET-PDA: Project Development Assistance for sustainable energy investments
  • LIFE-2024-CET-ENERPOV: Alleviating household energy poverty in Europe
  • LIFE-2024-CET-ENERCOM: Developing support mechanisms for Energy Communities
  • LIFE-2024-CET-SAP: LIFE Clean Energy Transition – Standard Action Project

Objectives

• LIFE-2024-CET-LOCAL — Clean energy transition plans and strategies in municipalities and regions
  • The topic aims to provide local and regional authorities with the necessary capacity, integrated approaches and organisational structures to deliver and implement plans and strategies for the clean energy transition (CET).
• LIFE-2024-CET-POLICY — Towards an effective implementation of key legislation in the field of sustainable energy
  • Under the Fit for 55 Package to implement the European Green Deal and the REPowerEU Plan, the Commission proposed a whole set of new measures to revise the main pieces of climate and energy legislation, notably the Energy Efficiency Directive, the Renewable Energy Directive and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. The revisions make the policy framework for sustainable energy more stringent and ambitious. While the legislative framework offers a good amount of flexibility to Member States to design the policy measures according to their needs and framework conditions, accurate monitoring, projecting and evaluation are essential elements of implementation. Importantly, the legislation is strongly interrelated and needs to be implemented and reported in an integrated, consistent way, including through the updates and implementation of the National Energy and Climate Plans, and their biannual integrated progress reports.
• LIFE-2024-CET-PRODUCTS — Real world energy consumption of energyrelated products
  • Harmonised standards are not always representative of actual energy consumption in real-life conditions. Evaluating the impacts of EU Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Regulations following these standards can lead to overestimations, as pointed out in the 2020 European Court of Auditors ecodesign and energy labelling audit.
• LIFE-2024-CET-BETTERRENO — Energy Performance of Buildings – Making renovation faster, deeper, smarter, service- and data-driven
  • This topic contributes to the goals of the EU Renovation Wave strategy and aims to help implement current and future buildings policies, notably in view of the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), but considering as well aspects of the New European Bauhaus initiative.
• LIFE-2024-CET-BUSINESS — Supporting the clean energy transition of European businesses
  • Engaging businesses in the clean energy transition and reducing their domestic footprint is central for the European Green Deal and to deliver on the Fit-for-55 package and the REPowerEU Plan to phase-out EU dependence on Russian fossil fuel imports. It is also important for the Green Deal Industrial Plan and the overall competitiveness of the EU economy. Energy policy instruments such as the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and the Renewable Energy Directive (RED)recognise the role that businesses, especially small and medium-sized, can have at local and national level in accelerating the transition.
• LIFE-2024-CET-BUILDSKILLS — BUILD UP Skills – Upskilling and reskilling interventions for building decarbonization
  • Launched in 2011, the BUILD UP Skills initiative is supporting the upskilling of building professionals across Europe, to deliver building renovations offering high energy performance as well as new nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (nZEBs). This effort needs to be sustained through the rollout of ambitious training and qualification interventions aligned with the EU Green Deal, the EU’s 2030 climate objectives as well as the EU’s long-term strategy of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
• LIFE-2024-CET-HEATPUMPS — Supporting the roll-out of high-quality heat pump installations
  • Heat pumps represent one of the key technologies to meet the 2030 EU energy and climate targets and towards the climate neutrality of heating and cooling by midcentury. As part of the REPowerEU Plan to phase out EU dependence on fossil fuels imports the European Commission has called for 10 million additional heat pumps installed within 5 years. While market growth of 2021 and 2022 alone – cumulatively amounting to slightly below 5 million new units – is already overshooting on this aspiration, it is becoming increasingly clear that the present market deployment alone will be insufficient to deliver a profound transformation of the heating sector in view of delivering in line with the Fit-for-55 target and beyond. Furthermore, through the Net-Zero Industry Act49 which is part of the Green Deal Industrial Plan, the European Commission is aiming at increasing the manufacturing capacity of strategic net-zero technologies to meet at least 40% of the EU’s annual deployment needs by 2030.
• LIFE-2024-CET-DHC — Supporting district heating and cooling
  • To advance towards carbon neutrality and to phase out EU dependence on fossil fuels imports, there is an urgent need to reduce fossil fuels consumption for heating and/or cooling purposes. In that context, in particular modern and efficient district heating systems can connect local demand with low-temperature renewable and waste energy sources, as well as the wider electric and gas grids, thereby contributing to the optimisation of supply and demand across energy carriers.
• LIFE-2024-CET-PRIVAFIN — Crowding in private finance
  • The topic aims to increase the amount of private finance allocated to energy efficiency and small-scale renewable energy sources by establishing innovative financing schemes for investments in sustainable energy.
• LIFE-2024-CET-OSS — One-Stop-Shops – Integrated services for clean energy transition in buildings
  • As highlighted in the “Renovation Wave” initiative of the European Green Deal and in the REPowerEU Plan, there is pressing need to increase the number of ambitious building renovations across the EU and to better integrate the switch to efficient renewable-based heating and cooling as an integral part of building renovations. Businesses are one of the key contributors to the clean energy transition. However, many homeowners, building owners or small businesses lack the skills and capacity to set-up, implement and finance complex and ambitious clean energy transition projects. In addition, many project developers face high implementation costs, given the relatively small size of the investments and the lack of turnkey solutions, and have limited access to adequate and attractive financing solutions on the market.
• LIFE-2024-CET-RENOPUB — Facilitation structures for the renovation of public buildings
  • The public sector plays a key role in delivering the energy transition, with a unique mandate over their public assets and a unique convening power on actors across the value chain. The European Green Deal’s Renovation Wave58 aims to double the renovation rate of buildings by 2030, which requires also massive investment into the public building stock. In line with the REPowerEU plan to phase out EU dependence on fossil fuel imports, the public sector is called to play a key role in reducing its energy consumption through building renovations. The revised Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) requires the public sector at local, regional and national levels to reduce their total final energy consumption by 1.9% annually and to renovate at least 3% of the total floor area of their heated and/or cooled buildings annually, which should be transformed into at least nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEB) or zeroemission buildings (ZEB).
• LIFE-2024-CET-PDA — Project Development Assistance for sustainable energy investments
  • Project Development Assistance (PDA) offers technical assistance to public and private project developers to deliver energy efficiency and renewable energy investments of ambition and scale.
• LIFE-2024-CET-ENERPOV — Alleviating household energy poverty in Europe
  • In recent years, European households have continued to spend an increasing share of income on energy, leading to higher rates of energy poverty and negatively affecting living conditions, well-being and health. Most recent estimates suggest that 9.3% of Europeans are unable to keep their homes adequately warm. Following the recent surges in energy prices, the number of energy poor households overburdened by their energy costs is likely to be on the rise. These higher prices, combined with low incomes and poor energy efficiency of buildings and appliances, are root causes of energy poverty. In addition to its causal multidimensionality, the phenomenon cuts across different policy sectors beyond energy, such as health, housing and social policy, requiring coordinated, holistic efforts at all governance levels, and involving different sectoral actors. While increasing the uptake of building renovation measures can bring significant long-term benefits to energy poor households, energy efficiency measures at the household level and increased use of renewable energy are also key tools in addressing energy poverty and can lead to lower energy bills and improved living conditions.
• LIFE-2024-CET-ENERCOM — Developing support mechanisms for Energy Communities
  • Energy communities can help citizens and local authorities invest in renewables and energy efficiency. Community-owned projects can allow citizens to finance sustainable energy investments that deliver local economic benefits, social cohesion, and/or address other priorities such as improving the energy efficiency of housing or reducing energy poverty.
• LIFE-2024-CET-SAP — LIFE Clean Energy Transition – Standard Action Project
  • This topic aims to complement the main Coordination and Support Actions (CSAs) under the LIFE Clean Energy Transition work-programme 2024, with a Call for LIFE Standard Action Projects (SAPs), co-financing action in the area of the clean energy transition with up to 60% of the eligible costs specifically addressed to support bottom-up actions by key actors of the EU energy transition.

Funding Information

• The available call budget is EUR 81 250 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-LOCAL: EUR 7 000 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-POLICY: EUR 6 000 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-PRODUCTS: EUR 2 000 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-BETTERRENO: EUR 6 000 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-BUSINESS EUR: 5 250 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-BUILDSKILLS: EUR 6 500 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-HEATPUMPS: EUR 5 750 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-DHC: EUR 4 000 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-PRIVAFIN: EUR 5 250 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-OSS: EUR 7 000 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-RENOPUB: EUR 3 500 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-PDA: EUR 6 000 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-ENERPOV: EUR 6 000 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-ENERCOM: EUR 7 000 000
  • LIFE-2024-CET-SAP: EUR 4 000 000

Eligibility Criteria

• Applications will only be considered eligible if their content corresponds wholly (or at least in part) to the topic description for which they are submitted.
• Eligible participants (eligible countries)
  • In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
    • be legal entities (public or private bodies)
    • be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
      • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
      • non-EU countries:
        • listed EEA countries and countries associated to the LIFE Programme
    • the coordinator must be established in an eligible country.

Ineligible

• Applicants which are subject to an EU exclusion decision or in one of the following exclusion situations that bar them from receiving EU funding can NOT participate:
  • bankruptcy, winding up, affairs administered by the courts, arrangement with creditors, suspended business activities or other similar procedures (including procedures for persons with unlimited liability for the applicant’s debts)
  • in breach of social security or tax obligations (including if done by persons with unlimited liability for the applicant’s debts)
  • guilty of grave professional misconduct (including if done by persons having powers of representation, decision-making or control, beneficial owners or persons who are essential for the award/implementation of the grant)
  • committed fraud, corruption, links to a criminal organisation, money laundering, terrorism-related crimes (including terrorism financing), child labour or human trafficking (including if done by persons having powers of representation, decision-making or control, beneficial owners or persons who are essential for the award/implementation of the grant)
  • shown significant deficiencies in complying with main obligations under an EU procurement contract, grant agreement, prize, expert contract, or similar (including if done by persons having powers of representation, decision-making or control, beneficial owners or persons who are essential for the award/implementation of the grant)
  • guilty of irregularities within the meaning of Article 1(2) of EU Regulation 2988/95 (including if done by persons having powers of representation, decision-making or control, beneficial owners or persons who are essential for the award/implementation of the grant)
  • created under a different jurisdiction with the intent to circumvent fiscal, social or other legal obligations in the country of origin or created another entity with this purpose (including if done by persons having powers of representation, decision-making or control, beneficial owners or persons who are essential for the award/implementation of the grant).
• Applicants will also be rejected if it turns out that:
  • during the award procedure they misrepresented information required as a condition for participating or failed to supply that information
  • they were previously involved in the preparation of the call and this entails a distortion of competition that cannot be remedied otherwise (conflict of interest).

For more information, visit European Commission.