Deadline: 22 May 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected society, the economy and millions of people around the globe, and this impact is felt in EIT Community. The EIT provides unique support across Europe to students, entrepreneurs and innovators dedicated to developing innovative solutions to societal challenges.
EIT Climate-KIC is therefore issuing an extraordinary initiative in response to the pandemic crisis. Two streams of activities have been designed to:
- provide immediate and emergency support to selected green start-ups and small businesses impacted by COVID-19, and
- to support selected activities needed to regenerate and reboot economies in line EIT Climate-KIC’s mission to build a prosperous, inclusive, climate-resilient society founded on a netzero-carbon, circular economy.
The projects must deliver clear outputs by the end of 2020 – distinct products, services and solutions with well-defined market pathways. Studies, project plans, analyses or similar are not considered as products, services or solutions.
Priorities
- Beyond the dramatic healthcare crisis caused by this pandemic, they are also facing another crisis: a shock to economy tougher than any crisis since the 1930’s Great Depression, according to IMF. The impacts of the pandemic on the economy, businesses and workers calls for a strong coordinated economic response. EIT Climate-KIC is therefore supporting the call for a European Green Recovery, asking for a reboot of the economy.
- Massive investments are needed to simultaneously revive economies after the lockdown – i.e. emergency investments – and to address the longer-term needs to build resilience against future pandemics and other global threats including the threat of climate change. The abrupt halt to economic activities has, and is, causing great hardship. Addressing immediate health and economic needs is critical. However, longer-term investments to revive economies must go beyond a recovery of what existed before the pandemic. This disruption could, in time, be understood as the single best opportunity to set in motion an aggressive transition toward new models aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement.
- Longer-term stimulus investments have the potential to trigger a new European economic model: more resilient, more protective, more inclusive and operating according to green principles. Indeed, the transition to a carbon-neutral circular economy, the acceleration of the energy transition, advancing social and environmental infrastructure, and advancing sustainable finance have the potential to rapidly deliver jobs and growth, improve quality of lives for citizens worldwide, and contribute to building more resilient societies. To support this shift, innovation can and must serve as an effective hedge against future risks and as a mechanism for sensing, learning and responding rapidly in the face of radical uncertainty.
Categories
- EIT Climate-KIC will focus this Call on innovation programmes and projects which directly respond to and support emergence from the impact of COVID-19 and propose innovative solutions to address these impacts.
- Activities, projects and programs submitted in response to this Call should align with strategy ’Transformation, in Time‘ by contributing to the achievement of system transformation towards a low-carbon economy. They are in particular (but not exclusively) looking for innovation activities in the following priority areas due to their relationship with COVID-19 challenges, and their high potential impact on economic growth, and job creation and wellbeing:
- Circular economy, across policy, finance, education, entrepreneurship and innovation to change whole systems from linear to circular;
- Transformation of the built environment in cities requires innovation to explore the interactions between energy, water, clean mobility and distributed energy technologies as well as the appropriate supportive financing models and policy changes that also actively support communities and citizen engagement.
- Systems to deploy public and private capital in support of climate resilient, safe and sustainable communities. Well-designed financing structures can enable a modest amount of public capital to enable substantial private capital to participate in project financing that would be inaccessible otherwise.
- Circular economy, across policy, finance, education, entrepreneurship and innovation to change whole systems from linear to circular;
- To be aligned with systemic approach, innovation activities are sought that have a clear focus on the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with clear objectives to support:
- A just or people-centred low carbon transition towards a 2050 zero carbon economy by resulting in mitigation or resilience and/or adaptation impacts, and;
- The regeneration of economies through new job creation and co-benefits that support a just transformation and/or the advancement of digitalisation. Due to the need to allocate funding by the end of 2020, programs and projects that have the maturity level to grow and scale fast, create jobs, and that build and complement existing portfolio of work are preferred.
Eligibility Criteria
Only partner consortia led by partners located in EIT RIS countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Northern Macedonia) are eligible to apply under this project type – projects have to benefit stakeholders located in these countries exclusively.
For more information, visit https://www.climate-kic.org/get-involved/apply-for-a-grant/