Funding programme

Horizon Europe is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation.

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Call overview

This call aims to identify financially valuable cases of climate projects including climate adaptation dimension on top of other benefits.

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Expected Outcome

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• climate resilience solutions have been developed, tested and brought closer to the market, thanks to improvements in the way their bankability is looked at and assessed by the private and public investors.
• regions, cities and local communities are empowered for and have actively participated in the development and testing of a whole range of transformative solutions for climate resilience.
• private investors direct participation in the Mission is significantly increased, stimulating increased private (co-)financing of climate adaptation.
• regions and local authorities have assured maintaining the solutions in place for the future, beyond the implementation duration of the project, contributing to fostering deployment of innovative solutions for climate resilience, the enabling of their diffusion and the removal of barriers for their uptake.

Scope

While evidence suggests that there is financing available to address climate adaptation^[1], it is also evident that there is a shortage of bankable opportunities. Most promising climate adaptation projects rely on grants and public investments for their development. In many cases, while they benefit the public good, they struggle to prove any profitability and they risk getting abandoned at the end of the project when the initial financing comes to an end.

The European Investment Bank has shown that climate projects succeeding in securing investments are very rarely only addressing adaptation to climate change and in most of the cases they rather add a climate proofing component to a bigger project (for example, over dimensioning of an urban sewage system to take into account future scenarios of extreme rainfall events). The integration of climate change adaptation and mitigation theoretically provides co-benefits: efficiencies in the project implementation can provide capital savings (e.g., realising a green space for a city provides also water storage capacity in addition to a recreational opportunity); the mitigation component of the project can provide measurable outcomes in shorter timelines, reducing the scientific uncertainty of future climate scenarios. Furthermore, implementation can be faster as benefits can be faster monetized, and social acceptance facilitated.

Proposals should identify financially valuable cases of climate projects including climate adaptation dimension on top of other benefits, while safeguarding the principle of do-not significantly harm any environment objective (such as, biodiversity and ecosystems, freshwater etc). They should develop and test solutions, based on technological, social and / or business innovation, that deliver at once an increase of the resilience and adaptation capacity to climate change in the involved regions, cities, local authorities and communities, while also contributing to reduce or neutralise carbon emissions, improve water efficiency and/or safeguard biodiversity. To prove the financial viability of the proposed solutions, proposals should include business and/or investor partners and/or private sector actors (for example from the financial and / or insurance sector) in the consortium, interested in investing in the project (by participating directly in the consortium) as more resilient / less risky / more sustainable and assuring that they will maintaining the solutions in place beyond the duration of the project.

The proposed solution should address specific climate vulnerabilities identified as relevant at regional and local scale, with tailor-made responses and measures taking into account place-based data, socio-economic, identity characteristics and local governance.

Under the Mission approach, collaborations to develop and test effective solutions between regions/local authorities/communities facing similar challenges are highly encouraged and considered as a means to secure a larger impact. To this purpose, while the demonstration is expected to take place in at least three regions, the proposals should already identify other regions/local authorities/ communities (sharing common climate challenges), where reapplication of the proposed approach will be suitable. Inclusion already in the proposal of at least three “replicating” regions/local authorities/communities, interested in reapplying the lessons learnt (totally, partially or with the required adjustments) in their territories is required; this could take the form of inclusion in the consortium of one or more partners providing support for the technical exchanges and the knowledge uptake in the “replicating” regions. Replicating regions are not expected to also conduct a demonstration or carry out on the ground activities already in the course of the project but they should at least prepare, the theoretical framework for implementing the replication through the lessons exchanged with the demonstration regions.

Proposals should build (when relevant) upon previous developed or existing knowledge and adaptation solutions, designed and developed from previous projects^[2]. Those previous projects and initiatives that address climate change adaptation can be funded by National programmes; EU programmes, in particular the European Union Framework programmes for Research and Innovation (such as Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe), as well as the LIFE and Cohesion programmes but can also come from beyond the EU. Moreover, proposals should look into opportunities to scale up the solutions demonstrated and to foster their broad deployment across the European Union through the LIFE programme, and its integrated projects in particular, and through the European Regional Development Fund programmes. Projects should also connect to the work of the Climate Resilience Dialogue^[3] and link to the EU's sustainable finance agenda and taxonomy work and the use of sustainable investment ratings, when relevant.

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Eligibility

To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:

• the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions;
• the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States;
• countries associated to Horizon Europe;
• low- and middle-income countries.

See the full list in the General Annexes.

The following additional eligibility criteria apply:

Proposals must include demonstration activities to be carried out in 3 different regions/localities/communities located in 3 different Member States /Associated Countries, involving and including as beneficiaries in the consortium legal entities established in these three countries.

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Consortium composition

Unless otherwise provided for in the specific call conditions, only legal entities forming a consortium are eligible to participate in actions provided that the consortium includes, as beneficiaries, three legal entities independent from each other and each established in a different country as follows:

• at least one independent legal entity established in a Member State; and
• at least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries.

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Budget

Total indicative budget is EUR 27 000 000.

The Commission estimates that an EU contribution of 9.00 million would allow these outcomes to be addressed appropriately.