Boosting the clean energy transition in cities and regions
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See in 5 min if you're eligible for Boosting the clean energy transition in cities and regions offering max €15.0M funding💰 Funding Details
What the Grant Funds
The call LIFE-2025-CET-LOCAL – “Boosting the clean energy transition in cities and regions” supports capacity-building actions that enable municipalities and regional authorities to move from planning to implementation of their decarbonisation ambitions.
Eligible Scopes
* Scope A – Implementation of integrated decarbonisation plans
* Set-up or reinforcement of local energy teams/one-stop shops.
* Peer-to-peer exchanges and large-scale training of public officers.
* Deployment of concrete energy-efficiency / renewable-energy measures and optimisation of public expenditure.
* Scope B – Local heating & cooling plans
* Development of data-driven methodologies, templates, blueprints and fossil-free strategies.
* Skills building, data integration, stakeholder engagement (DSOs, industries, citizens), and regulatory streamlining.
Eligible Applicants
* Minimum three independent legal entities from three different LIFE-eligible countries.
* Core target group: cities, municipalities, provinces, regions, municipal/regional energy agencies and their groupings.
* Other actors (research bodies, NGOs, utilities, ESCOs, finance institutions, ICT companies, etc.) may join as beneficiaries/affiliated entities.
Funding Conditions
* EU co-funding rate: up to 95 % of eligible costs.
* Indicative EU contribution: up to €1.75 million per project; maximum legal ceiling €15 million.
* Action type: LIFE Project Grant (Other Action Grant – budget-based).
* Duration: typically 36 – 48 months (justify if longer/shorter).
* Opening date: 24 Apr 2025 | Deadline (single stage): 23 Sep 2025, 17:00 CET (Brussels time).
* Cost-eligibility window: From project starting date to end date (pre-financing possible, no retro-active costs).
Activities & Costs that CAN be Funded
* Staff costs for capacity-building, technical assistance, stakeholder engagement, data collection.
* Sub-contracted studies, IT tools, digital twins, energy mapping, feasibility assessments.
* Pilot investments only when strictly necessary for demonstration ("hardware-light").
* Travel, events, communication, citizen engagement, replication toolkits.
* Indirect costs: 7 % flat-rate on direct eligible costs (except sub-contracting).
Activities & Costs that CANNOT be Funded
* Large-scale infrastructure or construction (CAPEX heavy).
* Pure research not leading to immediate capacity deployment.
* Normal statutory tasks without clear added EU value.
Complementarity & Synergies
Projects must demonstrate alignment with:
* National Energy & Climate Plans, National Building Renovation Plans.
* Covenant of Mayors, HorizonEU Cities Mission, ELENA, EU City Facility, Smart Cities Marketplace, ManagEnergy, etc.
Duplicate funding across EU instruments is not permitted (Art. 191 FR).
🎯 Objectives
📊 At a Glance
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🇪🇺 Strategic Advantages
EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities – LIFE-2025-CET-LOCAL
1. Single Market Access
• Provides an EU-level launchpad to test, validate and roll-out municipal decarbonisation solutions in a market of 450+ million citizens spread over 242 million dwellings and 98 000 municipalities.
• Harmonised KPIs (energy savings, RES generation, GHG cuts) make proof-of-concept results immediately recognisable to buyers and regulators in all 27 Member States, shortening time-to-market for innovative products and services (e.g. smart H&C retrofits, digital planning tools).
• Local authorities gain negotiating power to aggregate cross-border demand and run joint tenders, lowering procurement costs up to 15-20 % through economies of scale.
2. Cross-Border Collaboration
• Mandatory minimum consortium of 3 countries seeds enduring transnational networks of municipalities, energy agencies and utilities.
• Facilitates peer-learning cohorts (e.g. Nordic–Med resilience pairing, coal-region–lighthouse city twinning) accelerating replication cycles from 5-7 years nationally to 2-3 years EU-wide.
• Enables pooled technical teams and shared digital twins, cutting duplication of feasibility studies by ~30 %.
3. EU Policy Alignment
• Directly operationalises the European Green Deal, Fit-for-55, EED Art. 5 & 25, RED III and REPowerEU by translating headline targets into bankable local pipelines.
• Supports Mission "Climate-Neutral & Smart Cities" (Horizon Europe) and SDG 11, providing an integrated reporting structure that satisfies both LIFE and Mission monitoring dashboards.
• Contributes to Just Transition by prioritising vulnerable groups, dovetailing with the Social Climate Fund.
4. Regulatory Harmonisation
• Creates pan-European templates/blueprints for local heating & cooling plans compliant with the new Renewable Gas & Hydrogen Directive (EU) 2024/1788.
• Standardises data-sharing protocols (GeoJSON, EPC open data, INSPIRE) facilitating cross-border interoperability of GIS-based energy planning tools.
• Reduces legal uncertainty for investors thanks to converging rules on energy communities, renewable self-consumption and public procurement thresholds.
5. Innovation Ecosystem Leverage
• Opens doors to 3 000+ research organisations active in Horizon Europe clusters 5 & 4, EIT InnoEnergy, JRC and the Smart Cities Marketplace.
• Municipalities can pilot AI-driven energy-system modelling, blockchain-based guarantee-of-origin schemes and heat-as-a-service contracts with cutting-edge EU tech SMEs.
• Facilitates access to 35 000 certified professionals under the EU BUILD UP Skills initiative, reducing skill-gap bottlenecks.
6. Funding Synergies
• 95 % LIFE co-financing de-risks early design; subsequent CAPEX can blend with
• ELENA (up to 90 % TA) for €50 m+ investments,
• InvestEU loan guarantees,
• ERDF/CF (€96 bn for 2021-27 energy efficiency & RES),
• Recovery & Resilience Facility (remaining €110 bn unspent),
• EU City Facility (€60 k grants) for smaller municipalities.
• Bundling enables "laddered finance" models—moving projects from LIFE TA → ELENA PDA → EIB/NRG loans → private equity—multiplying every €1 of LIFE grant into €20-30 of follow-on investment.
7. Scale & Impact
• EU-level dissemination (Covenant of Mayors, Energy Cities, Fedarene) reaches > 10 000 local authorities, ensuring wide replication.
• Potential aggregated impact (illustrative for a 1.75 M€ project):
• Primary energy savings: 400 GWh/yr
• Final energy savings: 260 GWh/yr
• New RES generation: 180 GWh/yr
• GHG reduction: 120 kt CO₂-eq/yr
• Triggered investments: €250 m 5 yrs post-project.
8. Strategic Value of Operating at EU Scale
1. Risk Diversification: Political, regulatory and market risks spread across multiple Member States, boosting bankability.
2. Benchmarking & Competition: Transparent EU-wide KPI dashboards spur a "race to the top" amongst cities, accelerating innovation uptake.
3. Policy Feedback Loop: Aggregated evidence feeds directly into upcoming directives’ revisions (e.g. EED Art. 3, RED Art. 24) giving beneficiaries a first-mover voice.
9. Actionable EU-Wide Opportunities
• Set up a Transnational One-Stop-Shop for municipal decarbonisation planning, offering shared legal, technical and financial services.
• Develop an open-source heat-mapping toolbox compliant with all 27 cadastral standards—exportable under permissive EU PL license.
• Launch a cross-border district heating cluster linking surplus industrial heat in one Member State with demand centres in neighbouring regions (e.g. AT-SK-HU).
• Establish an EU Skills Academy granting micro-credentials (ECTS & EQF-aligned) for public officers; stackable across Erasmus+ mobility.
• Pilot a regional carbon contract for difference (CCfD) pool to hedge price volatility for renewable heat projects.
10. Key Takeaways for Applicants
• Leverage the mandatory multi-country consortium to create permanent governance structures (EGTC, EEIG) that outlive the grant.
• Quantify impacts using both LIFE indicators and national NECP benchmarks to show additive EU value.
• Map and time-sequence other EU funds early to prove financial additionality and long-term sustainability.
• Plan for an EU-wide communications strategy (multilingual webinars, EUSEW showcases, policy briefs) to maximise replication and policy uptake.
🏷️ Keywords
Ready to Apply?
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