Important Projects of Common European Interests (IPCEIs) are initiatives led by the private sector and member states with a cross-border nature, endorsed by the European Commission. The eligible projects must represent a clear contribution to the EU’s objectives or strategies, including climate neutrality by 2050.
The funds, provided through state aid and private funding, are available to RD&I projects, first industrial deployment and infrastructure projects in the environmental, energy, transport, health, or digital sectors. These projects must ordinarily involve at least four member states, and their benefits must not be confined to the financing member states. While there is no carbon removal-related IPCEI project, the European Commission announced that it will consider an IPCEI for CO2 transport and storage infrastructure.
How much is available for carbon removal?
So far, nothing has been directed towards direct or indirect carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects as there is no IPCEI related to CDR. The existing IPCEIs relate to batteries, microelectronics, cloud and edge computing, health and hydrogen.
On the horizon
In the Industrial Carbon Management Strategy, the Commission announced it will consider the possibility of creating an Important Project of Common European Interest around CO2 transport and storage infrastructure and will explore the topic with member states throughout 2024. Given that several permanent CDR methods rely on such infrastructure, IPCEIs could become important for the scaling up of CDR.
Technology readiness level support
IPCEIs are generally open to projects between technology readiness level (TRL) 4 and 9/10 as they can focus on RD&I, industrial deployment and infrastructure projects.
Eligibility
There are no EU-level eligibility rules for IPCEIs. Companies in each member state are selected by their respective national authorities.
Funding rates
While there is no stated funding rate, IPCEIs can only cover eligible costs (those stipulated by the funding programme) of the forecasted projects and their funding gaps.