Synergies and mutual learning with national and regional initiatives in Europe on Industrial decarbonisation (CSA)

Topic updates

23 September 2025

15 September 2025
Reminder on proposal part B page limit and formatting conditions

1. Proposal part B page limit

The title, list of participants and sections 1, 2 and 3, together, should not be longer than page limit, indicated in a proposal part B template inside the Submission System. All tables, figures, references and any other element pertaining to these sections must be included as an integral part of these sections and are thus counted against this page limit.

The page limit will be applied automatically. At the end of a proposal part B template inside the Submission System you can see the structure of the actual proposal that you need to submit, please remove all instruction pages that are watermarked.

If you attempt to upload a proposal longer than the specified limit before the deadline, you will receive an automatic warning and will be advised to shorten and re-upload the proposal. After the deadline, excess pages (in over-long proposals/applications) will be automatically made invisible, and will not be taken into consideration by the experts. The proposal is a self-contained document. Experts will be instructed to ignore hyperlinks to information that is specifically designed to expand the proposal, thus circumventing the page limit.

Please, do not consider the page limit as a target! It is in your interest to keep your text as concise as possible, since experts rarely view unnecessarily long proposals in a positive light.

2.Proposal part B formatting conditions

The following formatting conditions apply (as listed in a proposal part B template inside the Submission System) and will be checked by the Agency during an admissibility check of submitted proposals.

The reference font for the body text of proposals is Times New Roman (Windows platforms), Times/Times New Roman (Apple platforms) or Nimbus Roman No. 9 L (Linux distributions).

The use of a different font for the body text is not advised and is subject to the cumulative conditions that the font is legible and that its use does not significantly shorten the representation of the proposal in number of pages compared to using the reference font (for example with a view to bypass the page limit).

The minimum font size allowed is 11 points. Standard character spacing and a minimum of single line spacing is to be used. This applies to the body text, including text in tables.

Text elements other than the body text, such as headers, foot/end notes, captions, formula's, may deviate, but must be legible.

The page size is A4, and all margins (top, bottom, left, right) should be at least 15 mm (not including any footers or headers).

Proposal part B template inside the Submission System document is tagged. Do not delete the tags; they are needed for our internal processing of information, mostly for statistical gathering. In that light, please do not move, delete, re-order, alter tags in any way, as they might create problems in our internal processing tools. Tags do not affect or influence the outcome of your application.

10 June 2025
Please note that due to a technical issue, during the first days of publication of this call, the topic page did not display the description of the corresponding destination. This problem is now solved. In addition to the information published in the topic page, you can always find a full description of destinations:

* destination 1: Achieving global leadership in climate-neutral, circular and digitised industrial and digital value chains;

* destination 2: Achieving technological leadership for Europe's open strategic autonomy in raw materials, chemicals and innovative materials;

* destination 4: Achieving open strategic autonomy in digital and emerging enabling technologies;

* destination 6: Digital and industrial technologies driving human-centric innovation,

that are relevant for the call in the Work Programme 2025 part for “Industry”. Please select from the work programme the destination relevant to your topic and take into account the description and expected impacts of that destination for the preparation of your proposal.

Synergies and mutual learning with national and regional initiatives in Europe on Industrial decarbonisation (CSA)

TOPIC ID: HORIZON-CL4-INDUSTRY-2025-01-TWIN-TRANSITION-38

Type of grant: Call for proposals

General information

Programme:

Call: INDUSTRY (HORIZON-CL4-2025-01)

Type of action: HORIZON-CSA HORIZON Coordination and Support Actions

Type of MGA: HORIZON Lump Sum Grant [HORIZON-AG-LS]

Status: Forthcoming

Deadline model: single-stage

Planned Opening Date: 22 May 2025

Deadline dates: 23 September 2025 17:00 (Brussels time)

Topic description

Expected Outcome:

• Increased cooperation across Member States and Associated Countries related to European, national and regional initiatives in the field of decarbonisation of energy -intensive industries in the context of a R&I deployment agenda.
• Support the implementation of the part on accelerating the decarbonisation of energy-intensive industries of the ERA Action on “Accelerating R&I investments for Europe’s industrial Transformation and Competitive Sustainability” featuring in the 2025-2027 ERA Policy Agenda.
• Exchange of best practices across Member States and Associated Countries on industrial decarbonisation projects and initiatives under the ERA Action and in the context of a R&I deployment agenda.
• Contribute to the Coordination of actions under the ERA Action and relevant work streams under the SET-Plan.
• Facilitate the development of new and update of existing national and regional industrial decarbonisation roadmaps, strategies, and action plans on energy intensive industries of countries participating in the ERA Action as well as under the SET Plan.
• Make available relevant national and regionally funded projects on the European Innovation Centre for Industrial Transformation and Emissions (INCITE)-Platform in line with a methodology developed by the Joint Research Centre in cooperation with other Commission services.

Scope:

The governance of the action should be under the authority of national and regional governments and relevant public bodies who are responsible for national and regional policies, strategies and programmes addressing energy intensive industries.

Proposals should support the coordination of national and regional public authorities’ funding of research, innovation, acceleration of public/private R&I and deployment of technologies for the energy intensive industries’ decarbonisation. It should be aligned with the policies rolled out under the Clean Industrial Deal. The proposals should take into account and build on the Mutual Learning Exercise on Industrial Decarbonisation^[1].

Coordination and support activities should address all of the following:

• Promote and organise active networking, exchanges of information and mutual learning and the application of a whole-of-government approach, involving national and regional authorities.
• Build an overview of national and regional technology roadmaps, strategies, and action plans on industrial decarbonisation.
• Compare this overview to relevant work at European level, including the ERA Industrial Technology Roadmap for low carbon technologies in energy-intensive industries, the updated SRIAs of the Processes4Planet and Clean Steel Partnerships, activities under the Innovation Funds, the SET-Plan, and the Net Zero Industry Act (and its and implementing acts), as well as the 2020 Taxonomy Regulation and its implementation as regards climate mitigation^[2].
• Build and exchange knowledge and expertise in national and regional industrial decarbonisation roadmapping for low-carbon technologies in energy-intensive industries; and develop monitoring tools and identify indicators to monitor progress.
• Promote the valorisation of knowledge and results of EU, national and regional projects, in line with the Council conclusions^[3] on knowledge valorisation of 23 May 2024.
• Implement the action through analytical work, providing information and data, workshops to facilitate collaboration among countries participating under the energy intensive industry part of the ERA Action and relevant working parties under the SET Plan among others.

[1] Mutual Learning Exercise on Industrial decarbonisation | Research and Innovation (europa.eu)

[2] Commission Delegated Act 2021/2139 as regards the relevant parts of section 3 on manufacturing

[3] https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-10182-2024-INIT/en/pdf

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