Blue economy window call (EMFF-BEW-2020)

The grants offered to SMEs in this blue economy window call for proposals shall help advance market-readiness of new products, services or processes. Activities could, for example, include trials, prototyping, validation, demonstration and testing in real environment conditions, and market replication.

A sustainable blue economy can also contribute significantly to European Green Deal objectives, including the biodiversity, circular economy, digital earth and farm to fork strategies and the transition to a climate-neutral economy. It can help communities and industries hit hard by the coronavirus or migration of key workers to recover through a more resilient economy with reduced carbon and environmental footprint and competitiveness on a global scale.

Also branded as ‘BlueInvest Grants’, this call for proposals belongs to a package of measures set up under the ‘BlueInvest platform’ encompassing assistance services for investment readiness and EUR 75 million worth of liquidity made available in 2020 for investing equity in funds specialising entirely or mostly in the blue economy or co-investing in particular companies.

The objectives of this call for proposals are to:

  1. Bring to market new products, services, processes, and business models in blue economy value chains and help advance their market-readiness;
  2. develop sustainable and innovative blue economy in Europe's sea basins;
  3. de-risk investment in these projects to facilitate their access to other financing schemes for the next stages of their activities.

The proposals should aim at developing business concepts further into a market-ready product, service or process aligned with the applicant's blue economy growth strategy. Projects are therefore expected to reach Technology Readiness Level(TRL) between 6-8, as defined in the General Annex G of H2020 Work Programme.

Projects are expected to achieve the following impacts:

  • Enhance SMEs profitability and growth performance,
  • Generate a measurable social and environmental impact, contributing to EU policy priorities as, for example, climate neutral and circular economy (‘European Green Deal’), and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (e.g. SDG 14),
  • Seize new market and business opportunities in the EU and beyond,
  • Increase private investment in blue innovations, notably by leveraging private co-investment and/or follow-up investments,
  • Demonstrate European added value, by contributing in a concrete way to EU growth, creation or maintenance of high quality jobs and, where relevant, to the EU’s sea-basin strategies,
  • Help communities and industries hit hard by the coronavirus or migration of key workers to recover through a more resilient economy with reduced carbon and environmental footprint that is competitive on a global scale.

More information can be found here.

Deadline: 
Mardi, 16 February, 2021 - 17:00
Geographical Coverage: EuropeanSector of Activity:
other