From heat-driven processes to the use of mechanical and electric forces (Processes4Planet partnership) (IA)

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.

From heat-driven processes to the use of mechanical and electric forces (Processes4Planet partnership) (IA)

TOPIC ID: HORIZON-CL4-INDUSTRY-2025-01-TWIN-TRANSITION-31

Type of grant: Call for proposals

General information

Programme:

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

Type of action: HORIZON-IA HORIZON Innovation Actions

Type of MGA: HORIZON Action Grant Budget-Based [HORIZON-AG]

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:

Energy Intensive industries will benefit from the following outcomes:

• Enable the integration of renewable electricity in the process industries by transitioning from heat driven to direct electricity driven process units in a plant;
• Contribute to achieving the EU climate neutrality objective as well as proposed 2040 90% GHG reduction target^[1];
• Achieve 25% energy savings compared to processes based on relevant Best Available Technologies;
• Improve the economic viability of the entire unit compared to the state-of-the-art heat-driven process and increase the competitiveness and resilience of the European process industry.

Scope:

The generation of heat, which is often sourced from fossil fuel combustion, is the biggest consumer of energy in the process industries and responsible for 60% of process industries GHG emissions. Heat input is in particular commonly used in separation and drying processes. The topic focuses on the development of new electrically driven industrial processes where heat input in such processes is replaced by electro-mechanical power or other forms of direct electrical input. These electrified processes could represent a major reduction of GHG emissions as well as an important source of energy savings. The scope does not include conventional electric heating or the use of heat pumps.

Proposals under this topic should address all of the following:

• Demonstrate and/or integrate highly efficient electrically driven technologies e.g., membrane technology, power ultrasound, mechanical activation, mechanically or electricity induced forces, electrochemical processes, that can replace traditional heating processes;
• Demonstrate and evaluate energy efficiency gains;
• Prove the effectiveness of the technologies towards GHG emission avoidance;
• Take a holistic approach which may include aspects such as redesign of equipment, requirements for advanced materials and integrated electrified processes;
• Ensure process safety, sufficient flexibility and ease of process control;
• Showcase improved CO2 reduction potential, performance, scalability and cost efficiency of the proposed solution through, at least, one realistic use case that can be replicable with demonstrable economic return.

The inclusion of a GHG avoidance methodology^[2] is recommended and should provide detailed descriptions of baselines and projected emissions reduction.

Proposals submitted under this topic should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination, underlining how the proposal will serve the purpose to boost industrial decarbonisation technologies supply chain in Europe. As project output an elaborated exploitation plan should be developed, including preliminary plans for scalability, commercialisation and deployment (feasibility study, business plan and financial model) indicating possible private and public funding sources (e.g. Innovation Fund, InvestEU and cohesion policy funds). Societal- and environmental impact as well as implications for the workplace (including skills and organisational change) should be outlined.

This topic implements the co-programmed European partnership Processes4Planet.

[1] 2040 climate target - European Commission (europa.eu)

[2] That could follow Innovation Fund methodology: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/innovfund/wp-call/2021/call-annex_c_innovfund-lsc-2021_en.pdf

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