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The CINEA website, the Executive Agency for Climate, Infrastructure and the Environment, reports a call for preparatory studies to develop and identify cross-border projects related to renewable energy (CB RES) within the framework of the Connecting Europe Facility – Energy, which will finance studies that contribute to the development of the next generation of CB RES projects involving the provision of any of the RES technologies.

Such studies can help project promoters to select the best project idea and define the cooperation agreement to implement it, and thus support projects before they have acquired the official status of CB RES project. A study can be conceived as a pre-feasibility study. The funding provided could also be used to provide technical, economic or legal support for the creation or advancement of cross-border cooperation with the aim of selecting the best project concept. As part of the preparatory study, some broader aspects of the system can also be covered, for example, the integration of additional investments for storage, or investments related to transport and or digital for synergistic elements.

A study can be used to start exploring (mainly through desk studies) possible sites in the territory of Member States (and third countries, where appropriate), to determine host countries and off-taking countries (contributors), as well as other exploratory tasks necessary to assess the overall costs and benefits of the project. It should allow the identification and formalization of the basic cooperation mechanism and may include communication activities  and stakeholder involvement.

The aim of the support is to enable project ideas to overcome obstacles that prevented cooperation projects from moving forward in the past (such as uncertainty about the sharing of costs and benefits between the Member States involved or the additional complexity of creating cross-border support). Projects contributing to the objectives of REPowerEU and the initiatives announced under the REPowerEU Plan from May 2022 are particularly relevant to the call, as well as those projects accelerating the deployment of renewable hydrogen to replace natural gas, coal and oil in industries and transport to favor decarbonisation.

The budget for a study should be between 100,000 and 350,000 euros.

Call budget: 1 million euros

Deadline is on 10/01/2023

All the documentation necessary to deepen the call and submit a project proposal is available here

Written by: Margherita Genua