What is the ‘Clean Hydrogen’ partnership?
The Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (‘Clean Hydrogen JU’) is an international public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European hydrogen industry and research community. The partnership’s main goal is to contribute to the EU Green Deal and Hydrogen Strategy through funding of research and innovation activities (as part of the Horizon Europe Programme).
Call for proposals 2024: themes and topics
The Clean Hydrogen Annual Work Programme 2024 includes one ‘call for proposals’ (with identifier HORIZON-JTI-CLEANH2-2024). The call opens on 18 January 2024 and invites innovators to come up with proposals that must address one of the following themes:
- Renewable Hydrogen Production (5 topics), with a funding budget of 25M euros available.
- Hydrogen Storage and Distribution (5 topics), with a funding budget of 27M euros available.
- Transport (4 topics), with a funding budget of 19M euros available.
- Heat and Power (2 topics), with a funding budget of 9M euros available.
- Cross-cutting issues (2 topics), with a funding budget of 4.5M euros available.
- Hydrogen Valleys (2 topics), with a funding budget of 29M euros available.
Detailed information on each topic can be found in the official Work Programme 2024.
The topics are grouped into three categories: 8 Innovation Actions (IA), 11 Research and Innovation Actions (RIA) and 1 Coordination and Support Action (CSA). Topics coded RIA involve early stage R&D and feasibility studies around specific challenges (with grants covering of up to 100% of the eligible costs). Topics coded IA are closer to the market. They include prototypes, pilots, demonstrations, and later stage R&D and testing (even intended ‘flagship’ projects). Grant support for such actions can be up to 70% for commercial organisations. Finally, topics coded CSA involve specific assignments for the Clean Hydrogen programme (like setting up research or knowledge centres). Funding rate: 100%. An important novelty in the 2024 call is that it will be implemented using lump sum grants.
Budget and deadline
The total available budget for the 2024 call is 113.5 million euros. Proposals can be submitted until the deadline of 17 April 2024 (17:00 CEST). The available grant sums differ per topic and lie somewhere between 1.5 million and 20 million euros per topic. Only the best proposals/projects will be rewarded a grant. Important assessment criteria are: the excellence, impact, quality and efficiency of the proposal. It goes without saying that the bar is set high here, and only parties with the right (high-quality) expertise will stand a chance of being awarded a grant. The fast deadline is an additional point of focus in this respect.
Want to know more?
The experts at PNO Chemistry and EGEN (both part of PNO Group) have years of experience with H2-related innovation projects and successful grant applications, and can assist you like no other in drawing up an application (and HQ project plan) with optimal chances of success. Feel free to contact us.
