EU-Wide Advantages and Opportunities for the call HORIZON-CL5-2025-02-D3-04 – “Development of hydropower technologies and water management schemes allowing for win-win situation of flexible hydropower and biodiversity improvement – Societal Readiness Pilot”

1. Single Market Access – 450 + million consumers and a unified power market

• Hydropower operators can test and launch flexibility services that immediately plug into the EU Internal Electricity Market (IEM), accessing all balancing, capacity- and ancillary-service platforms (e.g. TERRE, MARI, PICASSO).

• Equipment suppliers gain a one-stop conformity route (CE-marking) and can commercialise nature-inclusive turbines, digital twins or fish-friendly runners EU-wide without extra national certifications.

• Demonstrations performed under the project automatically comply with EU Network Codes, guaranteeing replicability from Iberia to the Nordics.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Consortium building requirement (≥3 entities from ≥3 Member/Associated States) unlocks direct cooperation among Alpine, Nordic, Iberian, Danube and Baltic hydropower clusters – each with different hydrological regimes.

• Shared access to EU research infrastructures (e.g. JRC Hydropower Testing Facilities, Karlsruhe Waterways flumes, SINTEF labs) lowers CAPEX for pilots.

• Interdisciplinary consortia that include Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) experts facilitate citizen engagement models transferable across languages and cultures.

3. Alignment with EU Flagship Policies

• European Green Deal: accelerates renewables penetration while safeguarding biodiversity (Biodiversity Strategy 2030).

• Fit-for-55 & REPowerEU: flexible hydropower offsets variability from solar/wind, enabling the 42.5 % RES target for 2030.

• Water Framework & Floods Directives: project outputs (e.g. ecologically optimised flow regimes) can become Best Practice in River Basin Management Plans.

• Nature Restoration Law & EU Adaptation Strategy: restoration of floodplains and sediment continuity delivers legally required ecological status improvements.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation Benefits

• EU environmental directives provide a common baseline; evidence generated in one Member State can streamline permitting in others, cutting time-to-market.

• Project can feed into upcoming EU guidance on hydropower sustainability criteria, shaping future regulations in favour of developed technologies.

• Lump-sum grant model minimises administrative divergence among national funding rules, allowing partners to focus on R&I.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• Synergies with SET-Plan Action 4 (Hydropower) and the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) ensure immediate dissemination to 250+ leading institutes.

• Digital Europe & EuroHPC give access to high-performance computing for river-system digital twins.

• Participation in EU Missions (Restore our Oceans & Waters) increases visibility and policy pull for ecological outcomes.

6. Funding & Financing Synergies

• Blending possibilities with LIFE (for biodiversity pilots), CEF-Energy (cross-border grid-connected reservoirs), Interreg (transnational river basins) and Innovation Fund (large-scale demo > 7.5 M€ CAPEX).

• Post-RIA rollout can leverage EIB Green Loans or InvestEU Guarantees for replication CAPEX.

• Regional ERDF/Just Transition Funds can finance associated civil-works in eligible Cohesion regions, accelerating take-up.

7. Scale, Replicability & Impact

• Europe hosts > 21 000 hydropower plants (≈150 GW). Even a 1 % efficiency/flexibility gain scales to 1.5 GW – equivalent to a large nuclear reactor.

• Harmonised environmental performance metrics developed under the project enable EU-wide benchmarking and certification (“Hydropower Sustainability Score”), catalysing market pull.

• Demonstrating win-win solutions in at least two biogeographical regions (e.g. Alpine & Mediterranean) proves robustness under climate-change-driven hydrological extremes, easing rapid replication across the continent.

8. Strategic EU-Level Value Proposition

• Only an EU-wide framework can simultaneously address cross-border river basins (Rhine, Danube, Sava) and interconnected power markets; national projects cannot optimise both water and electricity flows at this scale.

• The Societal Readiness Pilot status leverages Europe’s diversity to co-create socially accepted hydropower modernisations, generating a gold standard exportable beyond EU borders, reinforcing Europe’s technology leadership.

Bottom Line: Leveraging EU integration multiplies technical, commercial and societal value: a single demonstration can unlock a harmonised market, attract blended EU finance, comply with common regulation, and tap into a continent-wide innovation network—advantages unattainable at purely national level.