The European Commission has selected 65 projects as part of the Innovation Fund Heat Auction—the first-ever pan-European auction designed to accelerate the adoption of innovative clean heating technologies in European industry. The winners will receive grants from the Innovation Fund totaling approximately €400 million.
This was reported on the official website of the EU’s main executive body.
The projects will be implemented in 10 countries of the European Economic Area: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain. The innovative technologies used in these projects will help avoid emissions of over 6.6 million tons of CO2 over 10 years, as they will replace natural gas-fired heat production systems.
Together, they are expected to produce approximately 16.3 TWh of decarbonized heat during the first 5 years of operation. This is equivalent to replacing over 1.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas over 5 years, which is roughly equal to the annual consumption of 4 million EU households.
Which projects will receive grants
The winning projects cover a wide range of technologies and industries. Most of them are based on direct or indirect resistive heating. Others involve technologies such as heat pumps, solar thermal energy, electromagnetic and dielectric heating, as well as hybrid innovations.
As for the industrial consumer sector, projects here cover the pulp and paper, glass, ceramics, and construction industries, as well as metallurgy, which have been underrepresented in the Innovation Fund’s portfolio until now. Other sectors that will benefit from the heat auction include the food industry, as well as the textile and pharmaceutical sectors.
The auction covered three segments based on equipment temperature and capacity:
- 5 projects were invited under the theme of high-efficiency heat supply, with €62.1 million allocated for their implementation;
- 44 projects were selected under the medium-temperature heat supply category with a capacity exceeding 5 MW; their total budget amounts to €286.5 million;
- 16 projects were selected under the medium-temperature heat supply category with a capacity of 3–5 MW; together, they will receive €47.9 million.
On May 19, at the Cleantech 2026 conference, the European Commission announced the second round of the heat supply auction for the current year with a budget of €1 billion. The draft terms and conditions for the IF26 auction are scheduled to be published by the end of May.
Earlier, EcoPolitic reported that the European Union Innovation Fund will finance the implementation of 54 projects in the field of clean industrial innovation. In total, the European Commission has allocated €2.7 billion from revenues generated by the EU ETS to implement eco-modernization projects in 17 EU member states.
