Research and innovation in energy technologies are essential to unlock the various technological pathways that will lead to a cleaner planet for all, as per the EU 2050 strategy. Investment should target not only the deployment of established renewable energy technologies but also the development and demonstration of innovative solutions.

Energy technologies face long development timelines to traverse the technology readiness scale (e.g. from laboratory to market) and this journey is capital intensive due to the necessary high-end technical equipment and the need for large-scale demonstration of the technologies. The technical risks involved in addition to the institutional barriers of the energy sector can discourage private investors from engaging.

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To help these projects, the European Commission and the European Investment Bank launched the Energy Demonstration Projects financial instrument as part of the InnovFin initiative under Horizon 2020. To be eligible for this instrument, projects should demonstrate innovative technologies and business models in a commercial environment. This relates to renewable energy, energy storage technologies, carbon capture technologies and others. The technologies considered under the EDP instrument should be innovative compared to the state of the art and be in a pre-commercial or early commercialisation stage.

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The Hub’s experts are screening projects that demonstrate such “first of a kind” technologies. The scope is to identify and flag the gaps in the preparation of projects. Identification of any additional technical or financial advisory support is also considered. With the Hub’s support, these innovative projects are receiving light advisory to support them in accessing financing from sources such as the InnovFin Energy Demonstration Projects product.

This work aims to contribute towards achieving the targets of the Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET Plan) and, subsequently, boost the EU’s effort to develop a portfolio of technologies that can take forward the energy transition at a time of rapid changes and risks of technological lock-in.