Bringing innovative climate preparedness and resilience solutions closer to the market

Expected Outcome:

In direct support of the upcoming European Integrated Framework for Climate Resilience, the successful project is expected to address all of the following outcomes:

• Climate preparedness and resilience innovative solutions, including Nature-Based solutions, advance in their investment journey and get closer to the market, strengthening the competitiveness of the companies and organisations developing them.
• Public authorities are mobilised to stimulate demand for climate adaptation solutions, thereby contributing to the development and maturity of the European resilience market.
• Structural and operational bottlenecks to the deployment of climate resilience solutions are identified, along with good practices, and policy-relevant insights are derived from lessons learned.

Scope:

Rationale

Preparedness to current and future climate change is increasingly recognised as a driver of innovation and an emerging economic opportunity. The growing impacts of climate change are accelerating demand for technologies, services, practices and solutions that enable societies and economies to anticipate and manage climate risks. Already in 2021, the EU Adaptation Strategy highlighted the importance of scaling such solutions in order to strengthen resilience across economic sectors and regions. Moreover, the 2025 Preparedness Union Strategy outlines the link between climate security and the need for stronger public-private cooperation as a critical pillar of the EU’s preparedness.

As climate change and its cascading impacts intensify - through heatwaves, floods, droughts, ecosystem and supply-chain disruptions - the ability of industries, societies and economies to anticipate, adapt, and respond is becoming a decisive factor in security, strategic autonomy, productivity, investment attractiveness, and long-term growth.

Climate resilience technologies are key to strengthen Europe’s strategic autonomy. By anticipating climate impacts and embedding resilience into for example industrial, agricultural, maritime and forest-based, civil security, health, mobility and urban systems, Europe has the unique opportunity to reduce exposure to external shocks and reinforce the reliability of its internal market, in increasingly uncertain geopolitical times. Nature-based solutions have notably been identified as promising but there is a need to support their scaling up.

While EU research and innovation programmes have generated a substantial portfolio of climate adaptation solutions, a persistent gap remains between successful research outcomes and their wider deployment in economic sectors. Many promising solutions remain at demonstration stage and struggle to reach broader adoption due to fragmented demand, limited opportunities for real-world testing and insufficient connections between innovators and potential public and private buyers and users.

The project will address the lack of a coherent, EU-level pathway for scaling climate resilience solutions across all relevant economic sectors, which currently leads to underexploited innovation potential. By taking a business-focused approach, it aims to strengthen competitiveness, enable cross-sector replication, and help embed climate resilience by design across the European economy, acting as a bridge between Horizon Europe, the future FP10 and the European Competitiveness Fund.

Activities of the project

The proposals should address all the following aspects:

Services provided by the central consortium

Proposals should develop a common framework of intervention, setting-up the blueprint for the financial support to businesses and projects provided in form of financial support to third parties.

Recognising that many climate preparedness and resilience solutions address public needs, the project is expected to engage with and leverage privileged access to public authorities, including those directly involved in various EU initiatives (such as the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change and other EU Missions, the Covenant of Mayors, the New European Bauhaus as well as the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network). Such activities of buyer mapping and demand aggregation2 will be organised centrally by the consortium as coordination activities. They should also engage with operators of critical infrastructures, utilities, insurers and large industrial users exposed to systemic climate risks, where relevant. The objective is to pool demand, facilitating matchmaking activities between beneficiaries and interested buyers.

Finally, leveraging the experience gained from the support provided, the project consortium is expected to identify structural and operational bottlenecks to the deployment of climate preparedness and resilience solutions, along with good practices, and produce policy-relevant insights derived from lessons learned.

Direct support to businesses in the form of financial support to third parties

Through the launch of competitive calls, the project should provide financial support to allow at least 25 third parties to bring their solutions closer to the market. The financial support is aimed at solutions that are already relatively close to market at TRL 7.

The financial support is expected to be used for:

• Advisory services and direct support to businesses, with particular attention to SMEs, to help bring innovative climate adaptation solutions^[1] (TRL 7) closer to the market. Particular attention should be given to solutions that have previously received funding from Horizon Europe or previous framework programmes, in order to support their investment journey progression closer to market readiness, while avoiding funding twice the same activities by the EU budget.

The financial support should cover:

• Business development (strategic and financial planning, regulatory guidance)
• Innovation acceleration (support to final product development, capacity building)
• Market deployment preparation (market knowledge, support to commercialisation, regulatory compliance support)
• Market-ready pilots (pilot implementation, performance testing)

While recognising that all economic sectors are exposed to climate impacts, the project should give priority to at least one solution for each of the following areas^[2]: 1) water, 2) food & agriculture, 3) transport, 4) energy, 5) health, 6) civil security and 7) critical infrastructure, including buildings. Solutions can also address multiple sectors at the same time. The overall portfolio of solutions brought closer to the market should be balanced across priority areas while giving particular attention to Nature-based solutions. The project should provide support tailored to the specific characteristic of each of these areas.

At least 80% of the total amount of the EU requested contribution should be for financial support to third parties. The (first) cascade call should be launched in the first 12 months of the project.

Proposals should describe how they intend to provide financial support to third parties, in the FSTP Annex provided with the application form, including: the maximum amount for each third party; the criteria for calculating the exact amount of the financial support, the different types of activity that qualify for financial support, on the basis of a closed list, the persons or categories of persons that may receive financial support, and the criteria for giving financial support.

To deliver effective services across the various support areas and stages, the consortium should include partners with expertise in business innovation & market analysis and development, legal & regulatory affairs, operational and financial management applicable to climate resilience markets. Relevant expertise on integrating social sciences, humanities, and cultural heritage perspectives should be accounted for.

[1] Solutions are to be defined as any products and services developed by businesses to help people, assets, industry, or systems cope with the impacts of climate change.

[2] Such sectors are relevant in the context of the European Integrated Framework for Climate Resilience, as well as the European Climate Risk Assessment report.