Deadline Date: February 19, 2026
The European Union, through the Innovation Fund and managed by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA), has launched an auction call for proposals to support industrial process heat decarbonisation under the 2025 Financing Decision.
The objective of this topic is to reduce direct GHG emissions in industry by cost-effectively supporting the market uptake of electrified and direct-renewable industrial process heat for medium temperature heat and small capacity installations, production of industrial process heat between 100 °C and 400 °C, projects electrifying industrial process heat via technologies such as heat pumps, direct and indirect resistance heating, electromagnetic and dielectric heating, plasma heating, projects using direct-renewable (solar thermal or geothermal) heat for industrial heat processes, hybrid projects of the above-mentioned technologies. This call is implemented under the regulatory framework set out in Regulation 2024/2509 (EU Financial Regulation), the Innovation Fund Regulation 2019/856, and the ETS Directive 2003/87, and forms part of the EU Innovation Fund support for industrial decarbonisation.
Under the topic INNOVFUND-2025-AUC-HEAT-MEDTEMP-BELOW5MW, funding supports the installation of new electrified or direct-renewable industrial process heat capacity. The supported activities focus on producing industrial process heat within the temperature range of 100 °C to 400 °C and delivering automatically calculated GHG abatement. The available call budget is EUR 1,000,000,000, with EUR 150,000,000 allocated specifically to the INNOVFUND-2025-AUC-HEAT-MEDTEMP-BELOW5MW topic.
Projects must involve new installations, meaning that at the time of grant application the start of works must not yet have taken place. Eligible projects are required to have a minimum installed capacity equal to or higher than 3 MWth and lower than 5 MWth, and the newly installed capacity must be located at a single site, as virtual pooling of capacity is not permitted.
Applicants must be legal entities, either public or private bodies, and may be established in any country worldwide. Beneficiaries and affiliated entities are required to register in the Participant Register prior to proposal submission and undergo validation by the Central Validation Service, including the provision of documents demonstrating legal status and origin.
For more information, visit European Commission.
