EU Innovation Fund - Verification of avoided emissions
What is the EU Innovation Fund?
Since 2021, the EU Innovation Fund has been providing 10 billion euros annually for the period between 2020 and 2030 for innovative technologies to decarbonise European industry.
New project rounds are launched every year. Information on the current project rounds can be found on the EU Innovation Fund website.
Which technologies are supported by the EU Innovation Fund?
The aim is to support technologies and innovations in the energy-intensive industrial sectors that are also integrated into European emissions trading. The revenues from European emissions trading serve as the basis for this grant model. The focus is on technologies from the fields of renewable energies, energy storage, carbon capture and storage (CCS), carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) and cross-cutting technologies.
The funding is aimed at technologies and projects that have already proven themselves in the development and research phase. The funding is intended to enable the construction and commissioning of pilot plants on an industrial scale.
The projects are subsidised flexibly depending on the degree of implementation and the effectiveness of the plant.
To assess the effectiveness of the plant, the emissions avoided compared to the reference scenario must be calculated and verified. The subsidy increases the higher the avoided emissions, but amounts to at least 60%.
What are the conditions and requirements for the Innovation Fund?
An external audit by an independent authorised body is mandatory for the verification of greenhouse gas balances and avoided emissions. The top priority is that the verification is complete, independent and without conflicts of interest, i.e. that the verification body has not been involved in any way in the preparation of your balances and calculations.
A valid accreditation in accordance with ISO 14065, ISO 14064-2 or ISO 14064-3 is required to verify the applications for the Innovation Fund in accordance with the specifications of the EU Commission (InnovFund-LSC-2021 Application form). GUTcert holds all three of these accreditations, which can be accessed in the database of Deutsche Akkreditierungsstelle GmbH.
Accredited certification bodies are regularly inspected by the accreditation bodies of the European countries, in Germany this is the Deutsche Akkreditierungsstelle GmbH (DAkkS). Non-accredited certificates should be scrutinised very critically!
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