The INGENIOUS (Building resilience and accelerating transition to green and digital economy in Energy Intensive Industries) – Euroclusters project fosters SMEs operated in energy intensive industry to develop innovative projects. The INGENIOUS Innovation Grants will support projects that are aligned with the major challenges where SMEs need to accelerate the implementation of the digital and green transformation by a) providing affordable, clean and efficient technology solutions, b) developing new business models, c) innovating their services, technology and production lines, d) open new markets.
The Innovation Grant addresses small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in the Energy Intensive Industries and other SMEs that can be providers of solutions to the EII towards green and digital transition and resilience.
Funding:
The applicants can apply for a grant of max. €60.000 (including one mandatory training per SME for Resilience preparedness/business continuity training worth €250) covering 100% of the eligible expenses. The total budget reserved in Ingenious for the Innovation Grants is € 1.000.000.
- Maximum funding per SME: 60.000 €
- Maximum funding per project: 180.000 €
Eligibility:
- Applicants must declare their SME status in accordance with the SME definition of the EU.
- At least 10% of the supported SMEs will come from EU regions different from the countries of individual Euroclusters’ partners. Specific attention will be paid to EU-13 countries in the calls and those EU regions with which the Euroclusters’ partners had no previous cooperation and shall focus on engaging actors from regions with different levels of economic development. INGENIOUS consortium will keep track of this in the eligibility of proposals-phase following the closure of the Open Call and prior to the assessment.
- Applicants need to be active in some of the following sectors:
-Energy Intensive Industries: metalworking, nano, plasma technology, raw materials, chemistry, construction
–Solution provider: ICT, energy resources, circular economy, advanced manufacturing.
- Applicants must declare their financial stability
- Applicants must be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs)) and Ukraine
- non-EU countries:
- listed EEA countries and countries associated to the COSME part of the Single Market Programme or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature
- Hungarian applicants should not be excluded from participating in the Open Calls but you will need to verify that such Hungarian entities receiving FSTP funds are not part of the entities listed.
Eligible activities:
- Development of a prototype
- Demonstrating technologies in a relevant or operational environment
- Testing technologies in a relevant or operational environment
- Validation of technologies
- Designing a business case
- Designing and engineering a pilot
- Process optimisation
- Product development
Eligible activities must be addressed to at least one of the following challenges:
- Efficient and sustainable decarbonisation processes
- Technology improvement and/or product innovation for digital transition
- Technology improvement and/or product innovation for green transition
- Closing loops for efficient and sustainable process Innovation
- Ensuring safer and more efficient energy transition and supply
- Advanced materials leading to competitive higher sustainability and digitalization
- New-to-firm solutions and business strategies to face the challenges to overcome the EU-external dependency
