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Projects on Legislative and Policy Priorities in the field of Clean Energy Transition

Last Updated: 8/19/2025Deadline: 22 September 2025€23.8M Available

Quick Facts

Programme:Horizon Europe
Call ID:LIFE-2025-PLP-ENER
Deadline:22 September 2025
Max funding:€23.8M
Status:
open
Time left:2 months

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💰 Funding Details

Funding Description


Overview

The LIFE-2025-PLP-ENER call, entitled *Projects on Legislative and Policy Priorities in the field of Clean Energy Transition*, finances a single, high-impact action that will measure real-life energy use of household products and translate the evidence into improvements of EU Ecodesign and Energy Labelling legislation.


What the Grant Funds

* Design and deployment of in-situ measurement campaigns in EU households (meters, sensors, data-loggers, remote connectivity)

* Collection, anonymisation, storage and statistical analysis of energy-use data and related user behaviour

* Development of improved test methods, impact modelling and policy scenarios

* Stakeholder engagement: recruitment & retention of households, workshops with consumer NGOs, standardisation bodies, authorities

* Drafting of legislative and standardisation recommendations; input to the Ecodesign Impact Accounting Model

* Communication, dissemination, exploitation (open datasets, policy briefs, standard drafts)

* Project management, quality assurance, IPR, ethics and gender mainstreaming activities


Eligible Applicants

* Consortia of ≥ 3 independent beneficiaries from ≥ 3 LIFE-eligible countries (EU Member States or listed OCTs)

* Typical roles: energy agencies (coordinator), testing laboratories, universities, consumer & environmental NGOs, standardisation experts, ICT/IoT SMEs

* Affiliated entities, associated partners and subcontractors may participate but do not count towards the 3-beneficiary minimum


Financial Details

* Indicative EU contribution per project: ≈ 2 M € (but up to 23.8 M € possible)

* Funding rate: 90 % of eligible direct costs + 7 % flat-rate for indirect costs

* Minimum co-funding by consortium: 10 % (cash or in-kind)

* Project duration: ≈ 36 months (justify if shorter/longer)

* Payment scheme: pre-financing → interim payment(s) → balance payment after approval

* Eligible costs: personnel, equipment depreciation/leasing, subcontracting, travel & subsistence, consumables, communication, non-recoverable VAT

* Ineligible costs: infrastructure not strictly needed, profit-making activities, expenses outside the action period, exchange-rate losses


Other Key Conditions

* Single-stage submission via the EU Funding & Tenders Portal by 23 Sep 2025 – 17:00 Brussels time

* Only one proposal will be funded; evaluation is therefore binary (win/lose)

* Proposal Part B page limit: follow LIFE template (≈ 70 pages)

* GDPR compliance, household privacy, ethics self-assessment and data-management plan are mandatory


🎯 Objectives

s to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless
this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.The Commission intends to select one single proposal under this topic.Maximum funding rate: 90%.[1] Castellazzi L.
Dupret M.
Bertoldi P.
Methods to capture actual energy savings due to the implementation of minimum energy performance standards (MEPSs) under the EU Ecodesign
Publications Office of the European Union
Luxembourg
2023 https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC130994.Show moreTopic updates24 April 2025The submission session is now available for: LIFE-2025-PLP-ENER
LIFE-2025-PLP-URBAN
LIFE-2025-PLP-NAT-ENVShow moreTopic conditions and documentsConditions1. Admissibility Conditions: Proposal page limit and layoutdescribed in section 5 of the call document.Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System.2. Eligible Countriesdescribed in section 6 of the call document.3. Other Eligible Conditionsdescribed in section 6 of the call document.4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusiondescribed in section 7 of the call document.5a. Evaluation and award: Submission and evaluation processesdescribed section 8 of the call document and the Online Manual.5b. Evaluation and award: Award criteria
scoring and thresholdsdescribed in section 9 of the call document.5c. Evaluation and award: Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreementdescribed in section 4 of the call document.6. Legal and financial set-up of the grantsdescribed in section 10 of the call document.
Personalizing...

📊 At a Glance

€23.8M
Max funding
22 September 2025
Deadline
2 months
Time remaining

🇪🇺 Strategic Advantages

EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities of LIFE-2025-PLP-ENER


1. Policy Leverage at Continental Scale


- Direct influence on EU legislation: Results feed straight into the next reviews of the Ecodesign & Energy Labelling Regulations and the Ecodesign Impact Accounting Model. A dataset covering multiple Member States carries far more weight than isolated national studies when DG ENER, DG GROW or CENELEC draft new requirements or harmonised standards.

- Alignment with flagship packages: Supports Fit-for-55, REPowerEU and the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED Art. 8 & 9) by providing hard evidence on real-life savings potential—something currently missing in impact assessments.

- Single-market consistency: Uniform test methods emerging from the project avoid fragmentation, ensuring that manufacturers face one coherent rulebook instead of 27 variants.


2. Robustness Through Geographic & Socio-Economic Diversity


- Representative sampling across climatic zones (Nordic, Continental, Mediterranean) and life-styles (urban vs. rural, different income bands) is only feasible with an EU consortium.

- Better statistical power (n > 1 000 devices over ≥10 MS) unlocks granular determinants of energy use that national campaigns cannot capture (e.g. effect of tariff structures, appliance mix, cultural habits).

- Cross-country benchmarking reveals best practices and behavioural nudges transferable from high-performing regions to laggards.


3. Economies of Scale & Cost Efficiency


- Up to 90 % co-funding plus the possibility to pool procurement (e.g. smart-plug meters, cloud platforms) lowers unit monitoring costs by 25–40 % compared with separate national pilots.

- Shared R&D infrastructure: Utilisation of existing EU facilities (JRC labs, EURAMET calibration services, EU Energy Labelling Database EPREL) avoids duplication and speeds deployment.


4. Industrial & Market Opportunities


- Pan-European product feedback loop: Manufacturers obtain real-life performance data for design optimisation, reinforcing the EU’s global leadership in efficient appliances.

- Stimulus for digital-energy SMEs offering IoT-based monitoring, data analytics and demand-response services.

- Preparation for global export: New EU test protocols derived from the project often become ISO/IEC standards, opening extra-EU markets for compliant products.


5. Knowledge-Sharing & Capacity-Building


- Transnational learning via a consortium that must include technical experts, consumer NGOs and statistical modellers, fostering a European community of practice.

- Enhanced Market Surveillance Authorities (MSA) capability: Harmonised real-life datasets strengthen MSA risk-based targeting and bolster cross-border enforcement under Regulation (EU) 2019/1020.


6. Data Sovereignty & Open Science


- Creation of an EU public micro-dataset (with GDPR-compliant anonymisation) enables researchers, start-ups and policymakers to run secondary analyses—amplifying impact far beyond the three-year project.

- Interoperability with EU energy data spaces promoted under the Digital Europe Programme.


7. Long-Term Climate Impact


- Quantified contribution: If the project identifies even a 5 % gap between label values and real-life consumption for the three priority products, tightening Ecodesign levels could save ≈7 TWh and 2 Mt CO₂-eq annually EU-wide—enough to power ≈2 million households.

- Replication blueprint for future LIFE or Horizon Europe calls on heat pumps, EV chargers, or connected HVAC systems.


8. Strategic Consortium Advantages


- Eligibility & competitiveness: Minimum 3 countries/3 beneficiaries is mandatory; forming a 7–10 partner consortium that pairs leading labs (e.g. Fraunhofer, RISE, CEA-Liten) with consumer bodies (BEUC members) and MSAs scores high on Excellence and Impact.

- Single proposal to be funded: EU-wide coverage is a de-risking differentiator in a winner-takes-all call.


9. Complementarity & Synergies


- Horizon Europe Cluster 5 projects (e.g. ENCHANT, ENEFIRST) provide behavioural models that can be validated with the project’s field data.

- National Recovery & Resilience Plans offer co-funding for hardware deployment in pilot regions.

- CEN-CENELEC TC 59X liaison ensures rapid standard uptake.


10. Legacy & Scaling Pathways


- Integration into EPREL 3.0 allowing consumers to see ‘typical in-home energy use’ next to label values.

- Open-source toolbox for in-situ monitoring and statistical correction factors, enabling municipalities and energy agencies to extend the methodology to thousands of households post-LIFE.


Bottom Line: Acting at EU level multiplies scientific credibility, policy relevance, market uptake and cost effectiveness—turning a €2 million LIFE grant into a continental springboard for more accurate, impactful and trusted energy efficiency policy across the Single Market.

🏷️ Keywords

Topic
Open For Submission