Joint letter calling for a ring-fence for the Horizon Europe Clean Tech Call for Renewables and Storage
04.04.2025
Renewables provided nearly half of Europe’s electricity in 20241 and are growing faster than any other energy source – but not fast enough. The competitiveness and energy security objectives of the Clean Industrial Deal cannot be reached without competitive European renewable energy and storage industries.
Europe must “close the innovation gap”2 with international competitors in the field of renewable energy and storage technologies, as identified by the Draghi report and the Clean Industrial Deal. We, the undersigned representatives of the EU’s renewable energy and energy storage industries, call on you to ensure that the Clean Industrial Deal calls in Horizon Europe will deliver on this goal.
We welcome that the Horizon Europe 2026-27 Work Programme will include a dedicated “Clean Tech for Climate” call to support “fit-for-deployment”3 projects to bring innovations to market. This will also help EU startups and scaleups bridge the ‘valley of death’ at their advanced, pre-commercial stage of development. We also welcome the call’s focus on creating a pipeline of projects from R&I to deployment to link Horizon Europe with the Innovation Fund. By prioritising leadership in renewable energy and storage technologies, Europe can transform its research prowess into building new industries and new manufacturing capacity.
The “Clean Tech for Climate” call should be ring-fenced for renewable energy and storage technologies.
Closing the innovation gap also requires closing the funding gap. Forcing renewables and energy storage to compete with other technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) leads to drastic underfunding: less than 5% of the funding awarded by the Innovation Fund has gone to innovative renewable energy or storage demonstration projects.