EuroWire, BRUSSELS: The European Commission said on March 24 that it had signed grant agreements worth €2.7 billion for 54 clean industry projects under the EU Innovation Fund, marking a major financing step for technologies aimed at cutting industrial carbon emissions. The projects cover 17 countries and 17 sectors, including cement, lime, refineries, manufacturing, renewable energy and transport. EU officials said the selected investments are expected to avoid about 210 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions during their first 10 years of operation.
The funding package forms part of the Innovation Fund’s 2024 call for net-zero technologies, which the Commission had previously said would allocate about €2.9 billion to selected projects across Europe. The latest announcement reflects the stage at which projects move from selection into binding grant agreements, allowing funding to be unlocked for deployment. Individual grants in the latest group range from €1.8 million to €216 million, underscoring the wide spread of project size and capital needs across energy-intensive industries and clean transport applications.
The Commission said the projects are designed to support decarbonization in sectors that are among the most difficult to clean up because of high energy use and process emissions. The portfolio includes industrial facilities and transport-related initiatives intended to scale low-carbon technologies and accelerate commercial deployment. The Innovation Fund is financed through revenues from the EU Emissions Trading System, making carbon market proceeds a central source of support for large-scale climate technology projects as the bloc works to reduce emissions while maintaining industrial capacity.
Funding focus shifts to deployment
Alongside the 54 signed projects, the Commission said six projects on a reserve list had been invited to begin grant preparation and could receive as much as €491 million if agreements are concluded. Those reserve projects are located in six member states and are projected to avoid about 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over their first decade of operation. The latest figures show that not every project initially selected under the broader 2024 call reached the grant-signing phase at the same time, while reserve candidates moved closer to possible funding.
The Commission has said the Innovation Fund could generate about €40 billion in revenue over the 2020 to 2030 period, depending on the performance of the EU carbon market. Across its calls so far, including projects still in preparation, the fund has awarded roughly €15 billion to about 250 projects. That makes it one of the European Union’s largest financing tools for industrial decarbonization, focused on helping companies bring lower-emission technologies from early development into large commercial use across multiple parts of the economy.
Broader clean industry drive
The grant-signing announcement comes as the European Union advances a wider clean industry agenda aimed at supporting domestic production of lower-carbon goods and equipment. Earlier in March, the Commission proposed new measures intended to strengthen demand for cleaner European-made products in sectors such as steel, cement, aluminum, automotive manufacturing and net-zero technologies. The latest Innovation Fund agreements add a concrete financing layer to that policy effort by channeling carbon market proceeds directly into industrial and transport projects that have completed the selection process.
The funding milestone also arrives days after EU auditors said the Innovation Fund had strong potential but had been slowed by delays that limited its impact so far on emissions reductions. Against that backdrop, the signing of 54 grant agreements provides a measurable step from policy design to project execution. The Commission has already launched its next Innovation Fund call for net-zero technologies with a budget of €2.9 billion and an April 23 deadline for applications, keeping the pipeline open for another round of clean industry financing.