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.

Accelerate the uptake of life-cycle assessment (LCA) for Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) chemicals and materials and resulting products (RIA)

TOPIC ID: HORIZON-CL4-INDUSTRY-2025-01-MATERIALS-52

Type of grant: Call for proposals

General information

Programme:

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

Type of action: HORIZON-RIA HORIZON Research and Innovation 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:

Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Support the implementation of EU strategies such as the proposed Eco-design for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR)^[1], the EU Ecolabel^[2], the Green Claims Directive proposal^[3], the One-Substance-One-Assessment package^[4], the Batteries Regulation^[5], the Critical Raw Materials Act^[6] and the Net Zero Industry Act^[7] with scientific evidence on sustainability throughout the entire life cycle of chemicals and materials,;
• Reduce significantly the cost to apply LCA at company level, including for SMEs, compared to current costs;
• Allow an efficient and simplified LCA application at early stage of design and facilitate decision making for companies and policy makers by providing user-friendly and cost-effective tools, methods and data;
• Provide advanced, reliable and predictive life cycle models and impact assessment methods, allowing for a satisfactory measurement of planetary boundaries;

Scope:

Proposals should identify and fill the gaps in LCA tools, methods and data used for improving the environmental sustainability and efficiency of chemicals, materials and resulting products, taking also into account the criticality of raw materials. The Environmental Footprint (EF) methods should in particular be built on. All stages from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal of products should be included. Data-driven decisions and actions for a greener and more sustainable future should be enabled, while respecting planetary boundaries. The tools should be in compliance with the Safe and Sustainable by Design^[8] framework, hence to be considered as a reference in the proposal.

Multidisciplinary research activities should address all the following:

• Develop advanced, user-friendly LCA tools and methodologies that allow for a comprehensive assessment of the environmental sustainability of the entire lifecycle of chemicals, materials and resulting products whilst considering planetary boundaries;
• Develop LCA datasets, in particular building on the EC PEF methods, from design to end-of-life of at least three relevant chemicals or materials and a selection of their resulting products. The selected substances should be emerging alternatives to substances of concern (as defined in the ESPR proposal) and should have a high socio-economic value;
• Develop solutions to fill in the identified data and assessment gaps and to estimate LCA uncertainty, using advanced digital technologies, modelling, machine learning and artificial intelligence;
• Feed relevant sustainability databases managed by the European Institutions and Agencies, such as the European Platform on LCA^[9] (EPLCA), with FAIR^[10] data and ensure new tools developed are findable by stakeholders.
• Provide guidance for LCA modelling of circularity scenarios for chemicals, materials and resulting products, in alignment with EC PEF methods and the SSbD framework;
• Ensure that the developed tools, methods and datasets are cost-effective and user-friendly in order to increase uptake and use in industry;
• Develop guidelines and user-friendly solutions to enable a seamless integration of the new LCA approaches with existing safety assessment tools and methods (notably the EC PEF method) to ensure a holistic SSbD assessment from the early innovation phases;
• Engage with the wider stakeholder community, especially with SMEs, to promote a harmonised use of the proposed tools and methodologies;
• Perform training and knowledge transfer activities to promote LCA and SSbD knowledge as well as life cycle thinking within the R&I ecosystem;
• Projects should contribute to yearly policy briefs and technical discussions, for example under the Eco-design for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR)^[1] or with the EF Technical Advisory Board;
• Proposals should leverage the experience of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) researchers in refining models related to child labour, employment conditions, and other socio-economic factors within LCA;
• The improved/advanced tools and methods should consider evaluating the economic and social dimension of sustainability at product level based on a functional unit.

Proposals should indicate to which chapters of the Strategic Research and Innovation Plan for chemicals and materials^[12] they will contribute.

International collaboration is encouraged.

Projects should build on, or seek collaboration with, existing projects and develop synergies with other relevant European, national or regional initiatives, funding programmes and platforms. Specifically, projects should collaborate with the Partnership on Assessment of Risks from Chemicals^[13] (PARC) and ensure complementarity with the SSbD toolbox^[14] and also engage with the IRISS project^[15] on the different value chains. Additionally, projects are encouraged to build on the results obtained by the ORIENTING^[16] project funded under the CE-NMBP-42-2020^[17] topic which has aimed to operationalise methodologies for LCA and to propose options to further advance the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF). Proposals should allocate the necessary resources for the above activities. Where relevant, proposers are encouraged to take advantage of and connecting to European research infrastructures and services.

Synergies with Horizon Europe missions as relevant are encouraged.

[1] Proposal for Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation

[2] EU Ecolabel

[3] Green Claims Directive proposal

[4] ‘One substance, one assessment' chemicals assessment reform

[5] Batteries Regulation

[6] European Critical Raw Materials Act

[7] Net-Zero Industry Act

[8] See documents defining the SSbD framework on: https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/research-area/industrial-research-and-innovation/key-enabling-technologies/advanced-materials-and-chemicals_en

[9] European Platform on LCA | EPLCA

[10] Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable

[11] Proposal for Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation

[12] Strategic Research and Innovation Plan for safe and sustainable Chemicals and Materials | Research and Innovation

[13] Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals | Parc

[14] Safe and sustainable by design toolbox | Parc

[15] About IRISS

[16] Orienting EU Project

[17] Materials life cycle sustainability analysis

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