Descripción del proyecto
Carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) has been recently recognised as a key technology to reduce carbon emissions, especially in hard-to-abate sectors, and significantly contribute to EU carbon neutrality targets for 2030 and 2050. Accelerating the upscaling and subsequent market introduction of CCUS research results and technologies is becoming thus increasingly urgent. The Horizon 2020 Programme (H2020) has contributed to the development of innovative technologies, including CCUS. The Innovation Fund Programme (IF) on the other hand, focuses on commercial demonstration of innovative low-carbon technologies. The transition from mature H2020 projects to the IF is a logical pipeline along the TRL line. Synergies between these and other EU funding programmes can contribute substantially to overcome the hurdles and de-risk large scale investments in first-of-a-kind CCUS flagship projects, but still much remains to be done in accelerating go-to-market strategies for publicly funded innovations. LEADS aims at bridging the gap from research to deployment for CCUS projects in Europe by building an innovation pipeline of promising H2020/HEU projects and supporting project owners to overcome the main bottlenecks and reach final investment decision. Building on their outstanding experience in innovation and EU programmes, as well as leveraging on their strong EU networks, LEADS partners will implement a well-designed methodology and set of measures to assess and select the most promising H2020 projects, coach them and enable them to apply to IF. LEADS methodology will be tested with six H2020 CCUS project cases. A set of reusable IF tools will be created and made available to CCUS stakeholders. Synergy mechanisms between H2020 and IF will be also created by aligning the CCUS up-scaling potential with IF targets. At LEADS project end, at least three H2020 projects are expected to have completed the full LEADS cycle and have submitted a full IF application.