Specific Challenge:
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.
Scope:
Objectives
The objectives of this call for proposals are to:
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[1] (TRL) between 6-8[2], as defined in the General Annex G of H2020 Work Programme.
Scope and activities that can be funded
In order to achieve the objectives above, proposals should aim to:
and/or
A non-exhaustive list of relevant areas for the blue economy includes:
Excluded areas are:
Activities could, for example, include trials, prototyping, validation, demonstration and testing in real- or close to real environment conditions, and market replication.
Applicants must explain how their proposals will advance towards the commercial phase by improving the market-readiness of innovative products and services and demonstrating their benefit to potential clients.
Expected Impact:
Proposals should specify the concrete outcome of the projects in terms of new products and/or services and criteria for their market uptake. Particular attention should be paid to Intellectual Property protection and ownership; applicants will have to present convincing measures to ensure the possibility of commercial exploitation ('freedom to operate').
Projects are expected to achieve the following impacts:
Applicants should justify how they address some or all of the expected impacts listed above.
The expected impact should be clearly described in qualitative and quantitative terms (e.g. on turnover, employment, market size, IP management, sales, return on investment and profit).
[1] Technology Readiness Levels (TRL): scale applied by public and industry stakeholders to assess the maturity of evolving technologies/applications in terms of their feasibility and commercial potential. The Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of the proposed actions must be from 6 to 9 (see General Annex G of the H2020 Work Programme to assess the TRL of your innovation):
TRL 6 - Technology demonstrated in relevant environment
TRL 7- System prototype demonstration in operational environment
TRL 8 - System complete and qualified
TRL 9 - Actual system proven in operational environment
[2]The limit to the frame of intervention of the proposed actions is to pre-commercial activities
[3]https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/european-green-deal-communication_en.pdf
[4] Sea basins strategies Atlantic, Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Western Mediterranean or Adriatic and Ionian Seas: https://ec.europa.eu/maritimeaffairs/policy/sea_basins_en
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