The European Commission organised a kick-off event to celebrate the selected projects of the Horizon 2020 European Green Deal call.
On October 27 2021, a kick-off event was organised to present some of the recently 73 selected projects for funding under the Horizon Europe Green Deal call. Commissioner Mariya Gabriel (Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth) highlighted that the EC launched the call to provide a strong signal to start working with urgency to achieve the European Green Deal (EGD) objectives.
The call launched in 2020 was the largest call under Horizon 2020 with an investment of €1 billion to contribute to the EGD goals to fight climate change and to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. It included opportunities for international cooperation and encompassed the needs of developing countries (including in Africa) in the framework of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It comprised 20 topics, and 10 thematic areas, eight of them were structured along with the European Green Deal (i. Increasing climate ambition: cross sectoral challenges; ii. Clean, affordable and secure energy, iii. Industry for a clean and circular economy, iv. Energy and resource efficient buildings; v. Sustainable and smart mobility; vi. Farm to fork, vii. Biodiversity and ecosystems; viii. Zero-pollution, toxic-free environments) and two thematic areas covering horizontal topics (ix. Strengthening knowledge, x. Empowering citizens).
Five of the selected projects covering areas such as wildfires (FIRE-RES), freshwater (MERLIN), green hydrogen (REFHYNE I), green airports (STARGATE), and food for schools (SchoolFood4Change) were presented during the event. They could unveil their objectives, plans, expected outcomes, and how these will have an effect for wider society in general.
Concerning the results of the call, a total of 1’550 proposals were submitted and 73 selected for funding, including 1’778 participants from 75 countries and 26’000 collaborations. The horizontal thematic areas “Empowering citizens” received with 373 proposals almost 25% of the total applications, followed by “Farm to Fork” (260) and “Clean, affordable and secure energy” (256). Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium were the most successful applicants among the EU Member States. Also the UK, until end of 2020 still a Member State, showed strong performance. Switzerland was – together with Israel and Norway one of the best performers among the Associated Countries. Switzerland submitted 495 applications and was awarded 14.2 million for 32 successful participants contributing to 21 projects.
More than 40% of the applicants were from the private sector, 24% from higher education, 18% from public research institutes, 10% from several types of organisations (civil society, non-governmental organisations, international organisations, associations, etc.), and 7% form public bodies.