Project development assistance for innovative bankable and aggregated sustainable energy investment schemes and projects

Specific challenge: Significant efforts are required to mobilise all relevant stakeholders, draw up investment inventories, develop feasibility studies, financial engineering instruments, and to address legal and procurement issues.

In this context, it is necessary to support project promoters through dedicated project development assistance facilities and capacity building and thus demonstrate the viability and positive impacts of aggregated, sustainable energy investments.

Scope: Project development assistance support will be provided to public and private project promoters such as public/private infrastructure operators, energy service companies (ESCOs), retail chains, cities and SMEs/industry, leading to innovative, bankable and aggregated sustainable energy investment schemes and projects of EUR 6 million – EUR 50 million. The support will be conditional on mobilized investments. The focus should be on existing public and private buildings, retail energy market infrastructure[1], commercial and logistic properties and sites. The major objective of supported projects will be to demonstrate the financial viability and sustainability of large-scale sustainable energy investments. Proposals must have an exemplary/showcase dimension, be replicable as well as deliver organisational innovation in the mobilisation of the investments and/or the financial approach. Innovation should be demonstrated taking into account the situation in the targeted country. Proposals must also include a clear action plan to communicate across Europe towards potential replicators. Further, supported projects will be required to participate in a monitoring and evaluation exercise run by the Commission (see the part on ‘Other Actions’ of this work programme, item B.1.1.14 for details).

Project development assistance activities implemented through this topic are complementary to the ELENA facility[2] implemented by the EIB (see ‘other actions’ B.1.4 for details).

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 0.5 and 2 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected impact: Development of credible pipeline of bankable aggregated projects and financial schemes and display of innovative financing solutions, leading to improved investor confidence. Every million Euro of Horizon 2020 support must trigger investments worth at least EUR 15 million.

Type of action: Coordination and Support Actions

[1] Retail energy market infrastructure includes, for example, smart grids, e-mobility charging points, public lighting networks, district heating networks, distributed renewables (such as on-site PV or micro-CHP) and demand response infrastructure

[2] www.eib.org/elena.