Innovation Fund: Stakeholder Consultation Event on the IF25 Calls for Proposals

On June 27, 2025, representatives from the H2IF consortium (CLERENS, EASE, ZABALA) attended on site the “Innovation Fund: Stakeholder Consultation Event on the IF25 Calls for Proposals” organised by the Directorate-General for Climate Action (DG CLIMA).

Similarly to the event held in 2024, DG CLIMA provided an overview of the most recent policy developments on the EU competitiveness strategy and the latest updates from the IF24 Call, with the main results by sector.

More specific insights on the Innovation Fund were provided too, including the new framework of the Project Development Assistance (PDA) by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the key results of the IF Knowledge Sharing report, focusing on the main challenges for successful ongoing projects. DG CLIMA also announced that the results of the Battery Call of IF24 should be available in the coming weeks, hence earlier than the results from the Net-Zero Call.

H2IF also attended the breakout sessions held in the afternoon, particularly those on “Clean tech manufacturing”, where a potential “Battery Fund” to support ramp up of innovative battery technologies from R&D to deployment was presented, and “Renewable energy generation and Energy storage use”, during which EASE presented the energy storage planned project pipeline and provided some recommendations based on key industry takeaways.

Overall, during the event H2IF consortium partners took the opportunity to network and present H2IF to potential interested counterparties, but also to provide useful feedback to institutional stakeholders on the IF application process and technicalities.