Industrial decarbonisation: HORIZON-CID-2027-01-01
Opening
12 January 2027
Deadline
Keywords
Clean Industrial Deal
energy intensive industries
IA
CCU and CCUS
industrial electrification
Clean Steel
circularity & resource efficiency
Processes4Planet
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HORIZON-CID-2027-01-01: R&I in Support of the Clean Industrial Deal: Decarbonisation of energy intensive industries (IA) (Processes4Planet and Clean Steel partnerships)
Where does the carbon in industrial CO₂ emissions come from?
Industrial CO₂ can originate both from fuel combustion and from chemical transformations of raw materials. In conventional cement production, heating limestone releases carbon already present in the mineral. Replacing the fuel therefore leaves this source of emissions to address. [1] Understanding where the carbon enters and leaves a process helps identify what a decarbonisation technology must change. HORIZON-CID-2027-01-01 brings this question to industrial demonstration through three areas: carbon management, clean energy use, and circularity and resource efficiency. Proposals need to connect their chosen route to an operational demonstrator or an improved industrial installation, alongside a credible path to market.
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Call facts and participation conditions
Which call is it, and when does it open?
- Topic: HORIZON-CID-2027-01-01, under the horizontal call R&I in Support of the Clean Industrial Deal (HORIZON-CID-2027-01), in Work Programme Part 14. Official topic page
- Action: Innovation Action (IA), with a single-stage submission.
- Schedule: opening on 12 January 2027; deadline on 15 September 2027 at 17:00 Brussels time.
What funding is indicated?
The indicative topic budget is EUR 125 million, with eight projects indicatively expected. The expected EU contribution is EUR 15–25 million per project; proposals requesting different amounts may also be submitted and selected.
Which conditions need attention?
- Consortium eligibility: the General Annexes normally require three independent beneficiary entities in three different countries: at least one in an EU Member State, and two others in different Member States or Associated Countries.
- Control restriction: entities in an otherwise eligible country are excluded if China, or a legal entity established in China, controls them directly or indirectly. General Annex B also restricts participation by entities established in China.
- Technology readiness: activities are expected to start at technology readiness level (TRL) 6 and reach TRL 7–8 by project completion.
- Proposal length: Part B may contain up to 60 pages, including the business plan and market-readiness strategy.
- Evaluation: the standard General Annex D thresholds apply. Awards follow ranking and a portfolio rule: at least the highest-ranked proposal in each main technology area is selected for funding, provided it passes all thresholds.
- Satellite services: when using satellite-based Earth observation, positioning, navigation or related timing services, beneficiaries must use Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS; additional sources remain possible.
- Results: the granting authority may object to ownership transfers or exclusive licensing for up to four years after the action ends.
Scientific scope and expected outcomes
What outcomes are expected?
HORIZON-CID-2027-01-01 proposals should contribute to all three outcomes: faster industrial decarbonisation and more competitive clean products; new first-of-a-kind operational demonstrators and/or improvements to newly installed decarbonisation solutions in Europe; and demonstrated market readiness through a credible business plan, an industrialisation strategy and market-tested use cases. Sustainability, including biodiversity, and industrial resilience form part of the intended benefits.
Which technology areas are in scope?
- Managing the carbon cycle: carbon capture and utilisation (CCU), and carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), involving CO₂ and/or carbon monoxide (CO) from energy-intensive installations. The target is a 30% reduction in energy input per tonne of CO₂/CO compared with available technologies, assessed in relation to capture rate and purity. Commercialisation potential should address life-cycle assessment (LCA), market size and cost.
- Clean energy use in production: electrification, alternative clean energy carriers such as hydrogen, bio-based feedstocks and processes, on-site renewable-energy storage, and waste-heat use or upgrading. This area seeks major improvements by 2035; the topic does not assign it a general 30% target.
- Circularity and resource efficiency: a 30% improvement by 2035 relative to current industrial performance, addressing materials, energy and water. Circular value networks should reduce resource use and environmental impacts by turning industrial side-streams or end-of-use waste into feedstocks for which low-CO₂ technologies do not currently exist. In this area, solutions must achieve an overall positive LCA and remain commercially viable under the conditions expected at project completion.
Select one main area. An innovative combination of areas within an industrial sector is also possible. Justify the technologies in technical and business terms; advanced, safe and sustainable materials and processes can be included.
Integration may directly reduce process emissions or enable a new clean product. Consider other pollutants and biodiversity where relevant. Building on results from previous or ongoing EU, national or regional research and innovation projects is encouraged.
Plan the demonstration and deployment decision
Organise the work plan around the go/no-go decision before contracting and demonstration. Before that decision, the project is expected to provide detailed engineering plans, a techno-economic assessment, all permits needed for the demonstrator, and a complete business plan and market-readiness strategy identifying the industrial partners responsible for deployment.
- Choose the applicable performance target. For carbon management, compare energy per tonne at stated capture rates and purity. For circularity, define the resource-efficiency improvement against the industrial baseline. For clean energy use, establish indicators appropriate to the selected process rather than applying a universal 30% target.
- Use environmental assessment during design. Examine how technology choices change energy and material requirements, emissions and other relevant impacts. Keep the comparison basis consistent across options.
- Make permitting credible. Identify the permits, responsible partners and steps required to obtain them before the demonstration phase.
- Select the main area from the technical objective. Explain the proposal’s fit with that area. The portfolio procedure does not establish that a less crowded area offers a higher probability of funding.
Build the consortium and market-readiness strategy
The HORIZON-CID-2027-01-01 consortium should be industry driven, with clear industrial leadership for deployment after the project. A preferably small, manageable partnership is expected, and its size must be justified. This topic specifies neither a numerical maximum nor a requirement for an industrial producer to coordinate.
- Assign responsibilities around the demonstrator. Connect process engineering, site operation, technology integration, environmental assessment, permitting and commercialisation. Select research partners according to these tasks; no fixed number is prescribed.
- Include SMEs where their contribution fits. Small and medium-sized enterprise participation is encouraged. Explain the task and its relevance to the industrial demonstration.
- Develop the business case with company management. The business plan and market-readiness strategy are mandatory and decisive under the impact criterion. Address markets, customer needs, competition, financial projections, deployment requirements and comprehensive risk assessment. Update both through an annual deliverable and a final report.
- Plan beyond the grant. Identify technological and non-technological deployment barriers and a plan to address them before 2030. Further investment may involve programmes such as the Innovation Fund; a specific application to that fund in 2030 is not required.
- Coordinate with related projects. Synergies are encouraged with the Clean Technologies for Climate Action topics HORIZON-CID-2026-01-02 and HORIZON-CID-2027-01-02, and relevant projects under Processes4Planet, Clean Steel and other European Partnerships.
How should performance be assessed across the demonstrator’s operating range?
Build the demonstration plan around the conditions the industrial installation will actually encounter. Define the intended production rate, feedstock composition, product specifications and utility requirements. Select operating cases that test relevant changes in load and inputs, including start-up, shutdown and interruptions where these affect the proposed process.
For each case, record useful output, energy and material inputs, emissions, product quality and operating time. Set the comparison boundary before testing, and include the auxiliary equipment needed to run the solution. Separate measurements from estimates, and report uncertainty and data gaps alongside the results.
Agree acceptance criteria with the industrial operator and intended product users. Show which conditions have been tested, which remain supported only by modelling, and what further evidence is needed for deployment. This provides a practical basis for the operational demonstration and market readiness expected by the Clean Industrial Deal work programme.
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
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About the author
Céleste Chidiac, PhD
Scientific writer and digital marketing specialist
Céleste Chidiac holds a doctorate in neuroscience and molecular biology from the University of Strasbourg. Since joining the Microfluidics Innovation Center in 2023, she has combined scientific writing with website management. For MIC’s Horizon Europe topic pages, she draws on her research background to explain scientific challenges and clarify funding priorities. Her writing helps prospective applicants understand each topic’s scope, expected outcomes and research directions.
FAQ: HORIZON-CID-2027-01-01 - industrial decarbonisation and process integration
These questions examine carbon accounting, industrial heat and recovered materials when comparing decarbonisation options.
Does capturing one tonne of CO₂ mean avoiding one tonne of emissions?
No. Capture measures CO₂ separated from a stream; avoided emissions compare complete pathways. Energy supply and the subsequent use or storage of carbon affect that comparison. Meijssen and colleagues included these differences when modelling cement and methanol production. [2]
Does converting captured CO₂ into a product permanently store the carbon?
Not necessarily. Carbon can return to the atmosphere when the product is used. In Meijssen and colleagues’ cement-to-methanol model, methanol use releases CO₂, while electricity for hydrogen production strongly influences the overall emissions comparison. [2]
How can energy use be compared fairly between carbon-capture technologies?
Specify energy per tonne captured alongside capture rate, product purity and feed-gas conditions. State which compression, purification and auxiliary operations are included. The topic’s carbon-management scope explicitly relates energy input to capture rate and purity; a single energy figure without these conditions is insufficient.
Why do source and delivery temperatures matter for industrial heat pumps?
A heat pump’s electricity demand depends on both temperatures and the temperature changes along each stream. Magni and colleagues incorporated these conditions when modelling industrial heat supply at 100–200 °C in Belgium. A performance value from another temperature pair is not directly transferable. [3]
How can thermal storage support a continuous industrial heat demand?
Thermal storage allows heat production and heat use to occur at different times. In Magni and colleagues’ model, stored heat maintained the assumed constant process demand while heat-pump operation varied. The available flexibility depended on heat-pump and storage sizing. [3]
Does flexible electric heating always reduce renewable-electricity curtailment?
No. Curtailment means renewable generation that cannot be used. Magni and colleagues modelled reductions from flexible heat pumps and storage in a scenario with very high renewable penetration. That result depends on the electricity system and cannot be assumed for every industrial site. [3]
Why does recovered-feedstock composition matter for product quality?
Recovered materials can introduce constituents that change the process chemistry. Dunant and colleagues found that residual silica affected clinker formation from recovered cement paste; composition adjustments were needed. Their experiments support checking feedstock chemistry before assuming equivalent product performance. [1]
What makes industrial symbiosis technically workable?
The shared material or process must satisfy both industries’ requirements. In Dunant and colleagues’ cement–steel experiments, the slag chemistry had to serve steel processing and cement formation. A useful by-product for one industry cannot be assessed independently of the other process. [1]
Why must decarbonisation pathways be compared on the same product output?
Different outputs can distort the comparison. Meijssen and colleagues compared routes supplying the same quantities of clinker and methanol, including conventional production where needed. Their conclusions depend on those functional outputs and the assumed displacement of existing production. [2]
Does a higher water-recirculation rate prove lower freshwater demand?
No. Water circulating within a process and freshwater entering the site are different flows. Assess freshwater intake, losses and discharge against equivalent production, and include treatment energy. This separates internal reuse from the freshwater reduction sought by the topic’s circularity and resource-efficiency area.
References
[1] Dunant CF, Joseph S, Prajapati R, Allwood JM. Electric recycling of Portland cement at scale. Nature. 2024;629:1055–1061. doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07338-8
[2] Meijssen M, Becattini V, Mazzotti M. Integrated Carbon Capture and Utilization in the Cement Industry: A Comparative Study. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. 2024;12(7):2709–2718. doi:10.1021/acssuschemeng.3c07081
[3] Magni C, Peeters R, Quoilin S, Arteconi A. Assessing the Flexibility Potential of Industrial Heat–Electricity Sector Coupling through High-Temperature Heat Pumps: The Case Study of Belgium. Energies. 2024;17(2):541. doi:10.3390/en17020541