Tips & Tricks for a successful HORIZON-CL6-2027-02-CLIMATE-03 proposal
Opening
20 April 2027
Deadline
Keywords
soil analysis
carbon farming
Carbon Removals
RIA
TRL 5
CRCF Regulation
machine learning
scale-up
MRV tools
climate action
soil carbon storage
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HORIZON-CL6-2027-02-CLIMATE-03: Carbon farming innovation and scale-up
The Commission wishes to see the EU Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) Regulation implemented. Not as a policy exercise, but something farmers, foresters, certification bodies and carbon buyers can utilize without being bogged down in paper work. This subject concerns the development of the structures, processes, and information that transform the CRCF into a workable certification system within Europe.
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Administrative facts: what do we know about the HORIZON-CL6-2027-02-CLIMATE-03 call?
Which call is it, and when is the opening and the deadline?
- Call name: Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
- Call identifier: HORIZON-CL6-2027-02
- Destination: Land, ocean and water for climate action
- Topic: HORIZON-CL6-2027-02-CLIMATE-03
- Opening date: 20 April 2027
- Deadline: 23 September 2027
- Type of action: Research and Innovation Action (RIA), lump sum funding
What about the budget and estimated size of the project?
- Overall topic budget: EUR 12.00 million
- Number of projects expected to be funded: 2
- Budget per project: around EUR 6.00 million
What are the key eligibility and evaluation conditions?
- Standard Horizon Europe thresholds apply (General Annex B)
- The multi-actor approach is mandatory. This is an eligibility criterion, not a suggestion.
- If your project uses satellite-based Earth observation, positioning or navigation data, you must use Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS (other data sources can be added on top)
- Activities are expected to reach TRL 5 by the end of the project
- Gender dimension in R&I content is not a mandatory requirement for this topic
- Proposals must include a dedicated task for collaboration with the other project funded under this topic, and with relevant projects under other Horizon Europe calls, including the Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe” and the EU Soil Observatory (EUSO)
Scientific range: what does the Commission expect from the HORIZON-CL6-2027-02-CLIMATE-03 grant?
What outcomes are expected?
The Commission desires three things, plain and simple. To start with, a set of common models, methods, and data that can be input into a single monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) system of carbon farming, maintaining costs and administrative overheads at a minimum. Second, the CRCF Regulation should be made the preferred tool of certifying carbon farming in various settings and geographies in Europe. And third, there should be more access to scientific knowledge and practical assistance to CRCF rules among all the actors in the chain (land managers, certification bodies, market participants, governance bodies).
What is within scope?
- Creating technologies to certify carbon farming: machine learning, AI, blockchain, Earth observation, IoT, anything that streamlines the data gathering process and makes it less bearable to operators.
- Constructing and sustaining open-source libraries of models, sampling schemes, and emission factor data, in order to develop shared standards across carbon farming practices and enhance national greenhouse gas inventories.
- Capacity-building among the stakeholders through lessons learned during the first years of the implementation of CRCF through the tools of previous EU-funded projects.
- There is a need to create awareness among potential users of CRCF, carbon credit purchasers, bioeconomy companies, and financial institutions, and to gather their data in the process.
- Formalized responses (collected by practitioners, i.e. farmers, foresters, other land managers, certification schemes, certification bodies) of what works and what does not as part of CRCF certification.
- Determining and addressing the remaining barriers to large-scale involvement in CRCF certification, be it technology-related, economical, or social, and suggesting ways in which certification procedures, verifying regulations, and reward systems may be enhanced.
The subject matter does not refer to international cooperation or non-EU settings. It is concerned with European application of the CRCF.
What are the specifically proposed research directions?
- Integration of MRV systems: the Commission wants to have a single and interoperable MRV system as opposed to a patchwork of national or scheme-specific solutions. You will be interested in demonstrating the ways your tools fit into that vision.
- Data harmonisation at scale, especially on networks of benchmark sites, inter-laboratory ring tests on soil analysis, and interoperability protocols between data sets. It is in this place where the data infrastructure work is.
- Tech-driven cost reduction for certification: the work programme mentions machine learning, AI, blockchain, EO, and IoT specifically. However, the hidden question concerns reducing the per-farm cost of certification. As we have observed, proposals that quantify the cost reductions they aim to achieve are more successful than proposals that list technologies without an explicit cost case.
- Feedback loop from implementation of early CRCF: The regulation will come into effect in 2027, and thus your project will be gathering real-life data of actual certification endeavors, and not merely modelling.
- Barrier analysis and roadmaps to scale-up of the approach: why cannot a farmer in Romania or a forest owner in Finland join the CRCF certification, and what can be done about it.
Scientific strategy: how can you enhance your chances of being funded through HORIZON-CL6-2027-02-CLIMATE-03?
What scientific choices matter most?
- Use MRV innovations based on real certification workflows. The reviewers will seek proposals that have been tested on real-world CRCF methodologies, not on abstract carbon accounting models. Having pilot testing with existing certification schemes, however small-scale, is a good differentiator.
- In a minimum cover two or three pedo-climatic areas. A system that is effective only in northern European mineral soils cannot persuade evaluators that it will scale.
- Data interoperability to be budgeted in the beginning. Public lists of data, shared protocols, common emission factor databases: they should not be seen as a dissemination activity, but rather as a core deliverable.
- Present a clear argument for the cost per hectare of your MRV approach. The Commission does not use the language of reducing burden and minimising costs in a decorative manner.
- The social innovation point should not be overlooked. The reference to social innovations clearly refers to technological and economic innovations. Smallholder certification, belief in carbon markets, equity of incentive systems. These are not minor issues of this topic.
- The work programme requests you to suggest the way of the certification methodologies and verification rules improvements. That is an extraordinarily unseemly suggestion of being prescriptive. Take it.
- Connection to the Soil Deal Mission and the EUSO. This is not at all optional; it is stipulated in the call conditions. Arrange an actual collaborative activity, not a mention in the dissemination section.
Consortium and proposal-writing plan: what works best with this type of call?
- Between eight and twelve partners, or so. A multi-actor approach implies that you should have actual diversity, rather than academic laboratories. The organizations of farmers, certification organizations, and national agriculture authorities should all be at the table with specific roles.
- Unless you have two or three land manager organisations as full partners (not as advisory board members), then you are unlikely to be fulfilling the multi-actor criterion. We have heard about such consortia that are strong on paper but have no practitioner integration.
- At least one innovative SME in the agri-tech, remote sensing or carbon market platforms. These are the partners who introduce the commerce route as well as the credibility of the technology implementation.
- The data harmonisation component is more or less demanding a soil science laboratory or a research institute that has access to benchmark sites and long-term soil information.
- The implementation credibility that is lacking in academic-only consortia can be provided to your proposal by certification scheme operators or bodies that are already operating in voluntary carbon markets.
- Get the plan of collecting the feedback very concrete in the proposal text. Identify the milestones in the CRCF implementation that you will use. Demonstrate that you are aware of the regulation’s schedule.
- Record the collaboration activity with the sister project as a real work package rather than a two-paragraph promise. The Commission did not raise this to no avail.
How would microfluidics contribute to this topic?
The nature of carbon farming certification is based on soil and environmental data. Traditional laboratory methods of soil organic carbon, nutrient and microbial activity are slow, costly and difficult to scale. It is at this point that compact analytical platforms begin to make sense for the project.
- Soil analysis on a chip: envision a field sensor that provides you with soil organic carbon concentration and simple nutrient ratios on site in less than thirty minutes without having to send the samples to a centralised lab. Microfluidic systems are able to achieve this by combining sample preparation, chemical reaction and optical detection on a single disposable cartridge. That is a direct strike at the cost issue for a project that aims to lower the per-hectare cost of MRV.
- Wetland restoration and paludiculture are among the carbon farming activities the CRCF addresses through water quality screening. The MRV picture includes the monitoring of dissolved organic carbon, nitrates, and phosphorus in drainage water. Lab-on-chip devices are capable of performing these tests in the field, which data can be directly keyed into a digital reporting system.
- Microbial activity indicators: indicators of soil health and carbon sequestration are closely linked to microbial community activity. Microfluidic biosensors are able to measure enzymatic activities or rate of metabolism in soil extracts of which conventional methods are unable to offer you a proxy of biological carbon cycling at a cheap and rapid rate.
- Support by standardisation and ring-test: the call requests inter-laboratory harmonisation and benchmark networks. Microfluidic devices, due to their high level of control over reaction volumes and conditions, can serve as a reference tool in a ring test, enabling the laboratory to calibrate itself against the same standard.
When a consortium is constructing an MRV system, which must operate in thousands of farms, under varying soils and climate conditions, small and inexpensive analytical instruments are a necessity rather than a luxury. They belong to the infrastructure that facilitates scalability of certification. Microfluidics can be the hardware component of the MRV cost-reduction case that the Commission seeks.
The MIC already brings its expertise in microfluidics to Horizon Europe:
H2020-NMBP-TR-IND-2020
Microfluidic platform to study the interaction of cancer cells with lymphatic tissue
H2020-LC-GD-2020-3
Toxicology assessment of pharmaceutical products on a placenta-on-chip model
FAQ – HORIZON-CL6-2027-02-CLIMATE-03
What is HORIZON-CL6-2027-02-CLIMATE-03 about in one sentence?
It supports Research and Innovation Actions that operationalise the EU Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming Regulation as a certification framework, through the development of Monitoring, Verification and Reporting (MRV) tools, standardised data and support for farmers and certifiers.
Who should apply, and what is the budget envelope?
Universities, research institutes, SMEs, certifiers, farmers’ groups and public agencies may form consortia. The call will fund two projects, each with an approximate budget of EUR 6.00 million, from the EUR 12.00 million topic.
What is the CRCF Regulation, and why does it matter for this call?
What are the three expected outcomes the Commission lists?
Uniform models and data provided to a single MRV system, the CRCF Regulation as the most efficient source of cost-effective certification across different settings, and specific scientific and technical support provided to all stakeholders in the chain.
What does the multi-actor approach require in practice?
Actively working together with farmers, foresters, certifiers, market players and governments. Not panels, not surveys, but rather active partners, who are involved in the project conception and validation.
Which technologies does the work programme explicitly mention?
Machine learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain, Earth observation and IoT. It also mentions networks of benchmarks sites, inter-laboratory ring tests and interoperable data sets.
Why does the Mission "A Soil Deal for Europe" come up in this topic?
The Commission wants a specific task for collaboration with the Soil Deal Mission and the EU Soil Observatory (EUSO). Soil health and carbon farming share techniques and data, and the Commission wants projects to collaborate.
What TRL do projects need to reach by the end?
TRL 5. That is, the technology is tested and validated in the right environment, and pilot tested in real or close-to-real certification.
How does microfluidics fit into a carbon farming MRV proposal?
Microfluidic devices can provide field-ready measurements of soil organic carbon, nutrients and microbes, more rapidly and cost-effectively than a lab. They feed directly into the cost per hectare case that is at the core of the call.
What is the most common mistake to avoid for this call?
Taking the multi-actor requirement lightly. A consortium that lacks real practitioner partners, lacks a plan for feedback, and lacks a plan for interacting with the CRCF roll-out plan will not go far, whatever the technology.