MissionGreenFuels Call
Pool 3 Booster
Application Deadline: October 9, 2024, at 11:59 AM.
Project duration: Minimum 1 year. Projects must end no later than May 2028.
Total budget for this call: Minimum 5 million DKK.
About MissionGreenFuels - Our partnership and roadmap
The MissionGreenFuels partnership was established as a part of the Danish Governments strategy:
“Green solutions of the future – Strategy for investments in green research, technology, and innovation” (September 2020).
The MissionGreenFuels partnership is one of four InnoMissions and focuses on how to fulfil the Danish, European and global climate goals, specifically a 70% reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2050 by decarbonizing the transport, aviation and shipping sector through green fuels. A fundamental governance principle in MissionGreenFuels is a system-wide focus on a portfolio across knowledge domains, actors, sectors, and value chains.
The MissionGreenFuels partnership addresses different technological challenges of green fuels in a focused and coordinated way, using a roadmap to align and guide research and innovation activities, and ensuring knowledge sharing that identifies and builds on synergies whilst avoiding lock-ins.
The vision for the MissionGreenFuels partnership is to contribute substantially to the decarbonization of the transport, aviation and shipping sector and to support Danish research, innovation, growth, job creation and export potential within the field of green fuels.
What is called for?
The MissionGreenFuels partnership welcomes applications from ambitious and innovative small and medium sized companies (SMEs) including start-ups who contributes to solutions to issues and challenges towards 2030 and 2050 outlined in the roadmap (read it here).
We are calling for projects under the following theme:
Cost down and competitiveness 2030
We expect to fund 1-4 projects with investment from 1,5-5 mio. DKK (Max 35% funding).
Many technologies within the green fuel’s domain have reached a commercial level of readiness and is from an overall perspective ready for deployment and implementation when considering the technologies as an isolated matter. But the ecosystem, the value- and supply chains for the deployment, integration and implementation of these technologies are on the contrary defined by a much lower readiness. To reach the ambitious climate goals we need to make green fuels more economically viable and competitive with traditional fossil fuels on the global market.
While doing so, we must secure economic growth, create jobs and long-term competitiveness of Denmark – Danish SMEs and start-ups play a crucial role in this.
In this theme we look for new ideas from SMEs or start-up companies, with significant risk and innovative value. The solutions for this theme might not be fully mature or economically viable at present but have the potential to become cost-effective and competitive in 2030. This can also be intermediate solutions that contribute significantly to the climate goals of 2030 in the transition phase towards full climate neutrality in 2050.
Who can apply?
Only SME’s and startups are eligible to apply.
Upon final approval for funding, any new organization will join the Partnership via a signed Agreement. Besides, the company will have to sign declarations as follows:
- One for the status as SME similar to the declaration in this link
- And one for not being a so-called undertaking in difficulty as defined in article 2.18 in this link
Organizations not a part of MissionGreenFuels can request to join here.
What and how much can be applied for?
Total budget for this call is minimum 5 mio. DKK, conditioned by sufficient quality within the field of applications. Investment per project ranges from 1.5-5 mio. DKK and the partnership will cover a maximum of 35% of the project’s total cost.
Applicants must follow the Innovation Fund Denmark InnoBooster Guidelines in regard to – section 1.2, 1.4, 1.5 and 6 (link). Please note that there are specific requirements related to the financial status of the company acting as the applicant.
The following types of expenses may be covered by the Booster investment:
- Actual labour costs calculated from hours worked by new or existing employees employed directly by the company and engaged in specific activities in the project. Working hours for both the company’s employees and owners may be included.
- Expenses for public and private knowledge providers, both Danish and foreign (e.g. universities, GTS institutes, contract research institutes, private knowledge companies and specialist companies).
- Expenses for purchase of materials, experimental equipment, equipment rental as well as depreciation costs on new equipment corresponding to the extent and the time it is used within the project. Such expenses must amount to at least DKK 10,000 per invoice to be included in the budget and the financial accounts
All expenses should relate to the well-defined Booster project that you describe in the application that should clearly state how significant development is still needed for the solution to be fully developed and ready for market implementation. Expenses and costs that are not specifically justified in the application, cannot be included in the budget or the financial accounts.
MissionGreenFuels does not fund projects with a fully developed solution ready for market implementation, with the remaining activities dealing mainly with sales, marketing, testing, documentation and commercial production. If the solution is already available on the market, and the project deals mainly with optimisation, further development, verification and documentation, the project is probably too far in its development to receive booster funding.
Deadline for application: at 11:59 AM on October 9, 2024.
Expected response date: End of December 2024.
Expected earliest launch date: Q2, 2025.
Evaluation criteria
All applications will be evaluated on:
- Quality of the idea – the quality of the research and innovation
- Impact – value creation during and after the project
- Quality of execution – efficiency in the project execution and the implementation of the results
- Strategic fit to the MissionGreenFuels vision and Roadmap
Criteria 4 includes (but is not limited to) that the project:
- clearly contributes to creating societal value and value for the MissionGreenFuels partnership
- describes clearly the direction towards the Danish 2030 and/or 2050 climate goals, i.e. total time horizon and investment need for the potential CO2 reduction and long-term plan for the proposed solution
- contributes to maturing the entire Danish value chain
- clearly describes how the project fits into the EU legal framework
- can be scaled internationally
- contributes to CO2 reduction, job creation in Denmark and export potential
- contribute to lowering overall system costs in the production, distribution, and utilization of green fuels.
All criteria are included in the assessment and contribute to the overall assessment.
Evaluation process
Applications must be submitted via “Filkassen”.
Criteria 1-3 will be evaluated by external reviewers, see details on the criteria in the guidelines section 3.3 (link). Criteria 4 will be evaluated by the Partnership Board of Directors. Please notice that criteria 4 is crucial for the evaluation and poor evaluation of this section alone can decide whether the applicant will receive funding or not.
Each proposal will be evaluated by at least two external reviewers.
Before proposals are subjected to external review by experts, the Partnership Director will ensure that the proposals comply with the formal requirements described in the call text. Applications which do not comply with the requirements will receive administrative rejection and will not be subjected to external review.
The 20 applications with the highest total score from the external expert reviews, will be evaluated by the MissionGreenFuels Board of Directors. If fewer than 20 applications are received, all will be evaluated by the MissionGreenFuels Board of Directors.
The members of the Board of Directors can be found here. Applicants are asked to indicate whether they see any conflict of interest with any of these.
Application documents
- Application template please save the file as MGF_pool3booster_[project name]_[name of applicant]
- Budget template
Link to relevant documents
Please follow this guideline, when uploading your application to “Filkassen”
- Access the upload page by clicking on the image above.
- “ZIP” the documents in your application into one single zip-file.
- Save the zip-file as MGF_pool3booster_[project name]_[name of applicant]
- Upload the zip-file with your application by clicking the upload button and selecting your file.
- When you upload your application, a green box saying “upload complete” should appear. If a message appears with “upload incomplete”, please restart your browser and try again or try in a different browser.
Want to know more about our calls?
Through the MissionGreenFuels partnership, Energy Cluster Denmark and DaCES are organizing a webinar and several workshops to support the development of project ideas among the participants.
Find information about the events and register here.
Contact information
Please visit our Q&A page for overall questions about the calls.
For any further questions, please contact the MissionGreenFuels secretariat at missiongreenfuels@aau.dk.
Disclaimer
MissionGreenFuels has not yet received the contract from the Innovation Fund Denmark regarding this call. In the unlikely event that we cannot reach to an agreement, we reserve the right to withdraw the call text and announce a new one as soon as possible thereafter.
