New European Commission €21m funding for bioenergy research projects

The ERA-NET Bioenergy has launed a new round of funding open to research proposals on novel bioenergy concepts. Proposals may focus on different bioenergy value chains or energy uses (heating/cooling, electricity, transport biofuels), but in all cases, the question of economic, environmental and social sustainability of the concept/value chain must be addressed in the proposal. The official topic is: BIOBASED ECONOMY PROJECTS FOCUSING ON ENERGY USE/WITH ENERGY COMPONENT

Funding is available only for innovative, industrially relevant research and development projects. This means that a significant step beyond the state of the art is an absolute pre-requisite. 

Proposals are invited from transnational consortia which include large companies, SMEs, research groups/organisations and/or stakeholder associations, depending on national funding rules (in the UK's case: Innovate UK).

Submission of proposals Pre-proposal:

• The pre-proposal consists of one common document following the structure of the template available from 12 October 2015 on www.eranetbioenergy.net.

Full proposal:

• In the beginning of April 2016, only consortia whose pre-proposals pass the first evaluation stage will be invited to submit full proposals.

• These full proposals should follow the structure of the template which will be available on the ERA-NET Bioenergy website by January 2015.

• A non-confidential abstract of the description of work is required (for later publication in case of success only).

• The deadline for submitting full proposals is 30th May 2016, 13:00 CET. • Some national funding bodies may also require specific national documents (application forms or similar) from “their” applicants at this stage. Such national documents are NOT submitted centrally, but directly to the relevant ministry or agency. Please consult the relevant National Annexes at the end of this document for further details.

• All proposals should be written using ARIAL, font size 10 minimum.  

See here for further details.