Deadline Date: March 31, 2026
The European Commission (EC) is inviting grant proposals to support pre-commercial CO2 geological storage appraisal, accelerate storage site development, assist planning of CO2 capture projects, and help close the storage capacity gap, particularly in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe.
The focus areas and objectives of this call include carrying out a storage site identification and appraisal programme, including at least one injection pilot test in a deep saline aquifer, cooperating with national competent authorities to select priority target formations and gain access to existing subsurface data, demonstrating the legal feasibility of CO2 storage at the selected site, ensuring the test site is in a saline aquifer at a minimum depth of 800 meters with geologically stable conditions, minimal faulting, significant scalable storage capacity, favourable porosity and permeability, and proven confinement, designing tests to reliably quantify the injectivity index and optimize pressure transient response, and supporting all operations including data acquisition, processing, modelling, drilling, well completion, logging, injectivity tests, and monitoring technologies.
The Horizon Europe grant provides funding of EUR 25,000,000, with individual contributions around EUR 5,000,000, to enable consortia or subcontracted entities to carry out all aspects of the appraisal and testing operations. Selected projects are expected to provide robust geological data, demonstrate safe storage potential, and contribute to the development of scalable CO2 storage solutions aligned with regulatory and environmental safety standards.
Any legal entity, irrespective of its country of establishment, may participate, including entities from non-associated third countries and international organisations such as international European research organisations, whether or not they are eligible for funding, provided that all conditions set out in the Horizon Europe Regulation and any additional requirements specified in the relevant call or topic are fulfilled, and for the purposes of participation, a legal entity refers to any natural or legal person recognised under national law, European Union law, or international law, possessing legal personality and capable of exercising rights and bearing obligations in its own name, or an entity that does not have legal personality.
For more information, visit European Commission.
