Road or rail, water or air – funding opportunities for Horizon Europe projects
9th December 2021 at 5:19 pm
In an earlier blog post we had already taken a look at Cluster 5 of Horizon Europe, in which climate, energy and mobility topics are combined. Today we would like to zoom in on the specific funding opportunities for mobility research.
The mobility-related call topics are mainly concentrated in two Destinations of Cluster 5:
- Destination 5 – Clean and competitive solutions for all transport modes
- Destination 6 – Safe, Resilient Transport and Smart Mobility services for passengers and goods
Expert-tip: All the call topics belonging to these two Destinations have a “D5” or “D6” in their topic number, e.g., HORIZON-CL5-D5-01-01. You can therefore easily find all these call topics by searching for D5 or D6 on the EU’s Funding & Tenders portal.
There are two broad themes that span across several transport modes: batteries and fuels. Let’s have a look at the batteries first.
Batteries
With the start of Horizon Europe, a new EU partnership on batteries was launched: BATT4EU. All battery-related call topics in 2021 were part of this partnership and the first round of calls has already closed. In total, 61 proposals were submitted in the 7 different topics open for funding in 2021. The next round of calls for proposals will be opening in April 2022 with a deadline on 6 September 2022, with the call topics placed in Destination 2. In total, 138 million euro of funding is foreseen for 22 new projects in 10 call topics. The topics cover many different aspects from base material development and processing, enhanced battery testing and battery management, all the way to building an integrated battery manufacturing value chain in Europe and finally closing the loop by addressing end-of-life issues such as second use and recycling.
| Call topic identifier | Call topic title | Deadline |
| Coordination of large-scale initiative on future battery technologies (Batteries Partnership) | 06 September 2022 | |
| Digitalisation of battery testing, from cell to system level, including lifetime assessment (Batteries Partnership) | 06 September 2022 | |
| Next generation technologies for High-performance and safe-by-design battery systems for transport and mobile applications (Batteries Partnership) | 06 September 2022 | |
| Physics and data-based battery management for optimised battery utilisation (Batteries Partnership) | 06 September 2022 | |
| Embedding smart functionalities into battery cells (embedding sensing and self-healing functionalities to monitor and self-repair battery cells) (Batteries Partnership) | 06 September 2022 | |
| Sustainable processing and refining of battery grade graphite (Batteries Partnership) | 06 September 2022 | |
| Interface and electron monitoring for the engineering of new and emerging battery technologies (Batteries Partnership) | 06 September 2022 |
Fuels
The second broad theme are sustainable fuels and biofuels. They are seen as an important part of the solution to reach zero emission transport. There are several call topics addressing these in Destination 3, spread out across several calls and deadlines:
| Call topic identifier | Call topic title | Deadline |
| Innovative biomethane production as an energy carrier and a fuel | 23 February 2022 | |
| Demonstration of cost-effective advanced biofuel technologies utilizing existing industrial plants | 26 April 2022 | |
| Technological interfaces between solar fuel technologies and other renewables | 27 October 2022 | |
| Demonstration of complete value chains for advanced biofuel and non-biological renewable fuel production | 27 October 2022 | |
| Best international practice for scaling up sustainable biofuels | 10 January 2023 | |
| Development of algal and renewable fuels of non-biological origin | 10 January 2023 |
Next to these two broad themes of batteries and fuels, there are many call topics focusing on one specific mode of transport, i.e., road, rail, airborne and water-borne transport.
Road-based transport
There is one currently open call topic related to safety of road transport, closing in January 2022:
| Call topic identifier | Call topic title | Deadline |
| Predictive safety assessment framework and safer urban environment for vulnerable road users | 12 Jan 2022 |
And then there are three currently open call topics with a submission deadline of 26 April 2022. These topics all belong to the 2ZERO partnership. This partnership is aiming to accelerate the transition to a European carbon-neutral road transport system by 2050. The call topics below focus on different types of electric vehicles, where HDV stands for heavy-duty vehicles, BEV refers to battery electric vehicle and FCEV refers to fuel cell electric vehicles.
| Call topic identifier | Call topic title | Deadline |
| Modular multi-powertrain zer-emission systems for HDV (BEV and FCEV) for efficient and economic operation (2ZERO) | 26 April 2022 | |
| Nextgen EV components: High efficiency and low cost electric motors for circularity and low use of rare resources (2ZERO) | 26 April 2022 | |
| New generation of full electric urban and peri-urban Bus Rapid Transit systems to strengthen climate-friendly mass transport (2ZERO) | 26 April 2022 |
Rail transport
A new Europe’s Rail partnership is being set up as a successor of the previous Shift2Rail partnership. The regulation to establish the new partnership just entered into force a few days ago on 30 November 2021. In addition, there are currently some opportunities for rail projects under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), but there are currently no open call topics in Horizon Europe that address rail transport specifically.
Waterborne transport
For waterborne transport there is one open call topic with a deadline in January 2022, that is addressing the safety of ship transport:
| Call topic identifier | Call topic title | Deadline |
| HORIZON-CL5-2022-D6-01-08: Safer navigation and tackling containership fires | 12 Jan 2022 |
In addition, there are several open call topics with a deadline on 26 April 2022, of which four topics are within the “Zero Emission Waterborne Transport” (ZEWT) Partnership. This partnership, which has been officially launched in summer 2021, has set itself the ambitious goal to provide and demonstrate zero-emission solutions for all main ship types and services before 2030, which will enable zero-emission waterborne transport before 2050.
| Call topic identifier | Call topic title | Deadline |
| Exploiting electrical energy storage systems and better optimising large battery electric power within fully battery electric and hybrid ships (ZEWT Partnership) | 26 April 2022 | |
| Innovative energy storage systems on-board vessels (ZEWT Partnership) | 26 April 2022 | |
| Exploiting renewable energy for shipping, in particular focusing on the potential of wind energy (ZEWT Partnership) | 26 April 2022 | |
| Transformation of the existing fleet towards greener operations through retrofitting (ZEWT Partnership) | 26 April 2022 | |
| Seamless safe logistics through an autonomous waterborne freight feeder loop service | 26 April 2022 | |
| Computational tools for shipbuilding | 26 April 2022 |
Airborne transport
The following currently open call topics with deadlines in January 2022 and April 2022 are addressing air transport specifically:
| Call topic identifier | Call topic title | Deadline |
| More resilient aircraft and increased survivability | 12 Jan 2022 | |
| Towards a silent and ultra-low local air pollution aircraft | 26 April 2022 | |
| Digital aviation technologies for new aviation business models, services, emerging global threats and industrial competitiveness | 26 April 2022 | |
| European Aviation Research Policy in support to EU policies and initiatives | 26 April 2022 |
Putting your project in motion with accelopment’s experience
You have the research experience – we the experience to support you in writing strong and competitive proposals. Our long-standing experience reaches from Proposal Writing to Project Management and Dissemination of results in projects such as HEAT-INSYDE, Mat4Rail, H-DisNet or CHEOPS. We are here to help with your own project and are looking forward to getting in touch.
