Three new Horizon 2020 inducement prizes are now soliciting entries: Cleanest Engine of the Future, Engine Retrofit for Clean Air and Birth Day. The contests were opened on 20 and 28 April 2016.

As an initiative first launched by the European Commission in 2014, Horizon Prizes proved a successful tool for stimulating and drive innovation in specific areas of research, in an effective but flexible way. Prizes offers an incentive for new researchers or companies to work on a particular topic, stimulating innovation, developing breakthrough solutions and bringing in additional investment.

Further information about the latest contests as well as other prizes – closed or ongoing – can be found on the dedicated Horizon Prizes webpage.

Cleanest Engine of the Future – € 3.5 million

The Cleanest Engine of the Future Prize aims to encourage the development of next generation engine and powertrain technologies using conventional fuels.

The Prize aims to reduce the pollution produced by future new vehicles using either gasoline or diesel fuels and their low biofuel blends available on the market. While hybridisation and electrification are expected to play an important role, the reduction of emissions by conventional engines will still be important.

The single Prize of €3.5 million will be awarded to participants coming up with a solution integrated in a system prototype, which will be able to demonstrate reduction of emissions of pollutants and lowering fuel consumption in real driving conditions without affecting the operational capabilities of the vehicle.

The contest will be open to any legal entity (including natural persons) or groups of legal entities. The target audience are individuals, SMEs, research centres, universities suppliers of components and car manufacturers.

By 20 August 2019 participants have to submit the application through the Participant Portal and deliver the prototype to the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy.

Applications will be evaluated by an independent expert jury of more than eight members.

Engine Retrofit for Clean Air – € 1.5 million

The Horizon Prize for the Engine Retrofit for Clean Air aims at spurring the development of new technologies that can be applied to existing diesel engines and powertrains to reduce pollutant emissions in real driving conditions to a level comparable with that of new cars responding to the emissions legislation in force from 2017.

The Prize of €1.5 million will be awarded to the contestants who will demonstrate on a running vehicle a solution for an existing engine and powertrains that best addresses the issue of greatly reducing emissions of NOx, particles, hydrocarbons in real driving conditions, while ensuring low levels of undesired other pollutants also in the future. The technology should not affect the operational capabilities of the retrofitted vehicles, for instance it should not significantly increase the fuel consumption, at the same time providing sufficient dynamic performance for normal vehicle driving.

The contest will be open to any legal entity (including natural persons) or groups of legal entities. Target audience are individuals, SMEs, research centres, universities suppliers of components and car manufacturers.

Participants have to submit their application through the Participant Portal and deliver the prototype to the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy, by the deadline of 12 September 2017.

Applications will be evaluated by an independent expert jury of more than eight members.

Birth Day prize – € 1 million

The Birth Day Horizon Prize on reducing maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality will be awarded to the contestants who demonstrate a novel solution to improve the outcome of facility-based deliveries, which might be of clinical, technological or managerial nature, or a combination of these. Any solution must take full account of relevant social factors and have the potential of scaling up rapidly.

The Prize sees a financial commitment of €1 million from the European Commission, with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledging another €1 million and a further €500.000 donated by the MSD for Mothers programme of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corporation.

The contest is open to any legal entity (including natural persons) or groups of legal entities.

Participants have to submit the application through the Participant Portal by 6 September 2017. Applications will be evaluated by a jury of independent experts.