Expected Outcome:
Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
- Unlocking the economic potential of CO2 utilisation. Strengthening the industrial carbon management value chain through the delivery of innovative solutions for recycling CO2 to produce advanced synthetic fuels, chemicals, polymers or minerals, making them price-competitive and accelerating their market deployment.
- Contributing to emission reduction, energy security and autonomy of the EU through the gradual substitution of fossil-based feedstocks in the production of chemicals and materials by alternative feedstocks, like waste and residues, and captured CO2.
Scope:
Proposals must aim at reducing the capital intensity and energy and environmental footprint of CO2 conversion technologies to allow for upscaling in the short to medium term.
In particular, proposals are expected to:
- Provide information and assessment about the economic feasibility and the potential of scaling-up the proposed solutions at commercial scale as appropriate.
- Reduce the use of virgin critical raw materials.
- Define ambitious but achievable targets for energy requirements of the conversion process, production costs and product yields, as well of price competitiveness, that will be used to monitor project implementation.
- Define minimum CO2 concentrations and maximum impurities levels that the conversion process can tolerate. Solutions that can cope with less pure CO2 streams will improve the overall energy efficiency.
- Apply rigorous life-cycle analysis (LCA) to ensure that the proposed solution is comprehensively assessed on its ability to contribute to long-term sustainability: climate mitigation, adaptation, biodiversity, water use, pollution, and virgin resources depletion. The LCA must be in line with guidelines developed by the Commission, such as the Innovation Fund GHG methodology and the relevant ISO standards and the EU Taxonomy Regulation.
Proposed solutions should focus on the CO2 conversion process, although integration in industrial capture or direct air capture facilities can be included.
Enhanced oil, gas or coalbed methane recovery (EOR/EGR/ECBM) are out of scope of this topic.
Whenever the expected exploitation of project results entails developing, creating, manufacturing and marketing a product or process, or in creating and providing a service, the plan for the exploitation and dissemination of results must include a strategy for such exploitation and an analysis of equivalent final products in the market. The exploitation plans must include preliminary ideas for scalability, commercialisation, and deployment (feasibility study, business plan, financial model) indicating the possible funding sources to be potentially used (in particular the Innovation Fund).
