EUR 400 million awarded to European projects under the Innovation Fund Heat Auction
The Commission has selected 65 projects across 10 European countries to receive around EUR 400 million in support under the first-ever Innovation Fund Heat Auction. The projects, financed through revenues from the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), aim to accelerate the deployment of innovative clean heat technologies and decarbonise industrial heat production across sectors such as steel, glass, ceramics, pharmaceuticals, textiles and food production. The selected projects are expected to avoid more than 6.6 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions over ten years and generate approximately 16.3 terawatt-hours of decarbonised heat during their first five years of operation, replacing more than 1.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas.
The projects will deploy a broad range of technologies, including electric resistance heating, heat pumps, solar thermal systems and hybrid solutions. The auction allocated support under three categories based on temperature and installation capacity, with the largest share of funding awarded to medium-temperature projects above 5 MW capacity.
The European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) will now prepare grant agreements with the selected projects, which are expected to be signed in the second half of 2026. The Commission has also announced a second Heat Auction for 2026 with a budget of EUR 1 billion, further expanding support for industrial decarbonisation technologies across Europe.
For more information, see the Commission’s PR and our previous PR on the IF25 Heat Auction.