Salzburg small-business environmental investment grant
Businesses in Salzburg with up to 20 full-time equivalent employees can receive 50% of eligible retrofit costs, up to €5,000, for energy-saving upgrades, shading and greening.
The Salzburger Wachstumsfonds programme “Umweltinvestitionen für Kleinbetriebe” helps you reduce energy and resource use and greenhouse gas emissions at an existing business site in the state of Salzburg. It pays a grant of 50% of eligible investment costs, up to €5,000 per project.
Examples include thermostatic radiator controls, fully insulating pipes and fittings in building areas without heating or cooling, and balancing a heating system so water reaches radiators as intended. External shading, facade or roof greening with irrigation, and replacing sealed surfaces with permeable surfaces or perennial planting are also listed measures.
Lighting support covers indoor LED systems and new motion-activated or daylight-responsive controls only where total power is below 500 W. Outdoor LED upgrades can include controls but must not be advertising lighting. Eligible lighting costs include fixtures, necessary cabling, supports, controls, planning and installation. Simply replacing conventional bulbs with plug-in LEDs, modernising existing LED systems, and used LED fixtures are excluded.
The work must renovate, retrofit or optimise assets already present in the business. New buildings, ordinary maintenance and your own staff’s labour are excluded. The official rules list the complete measure menu and technical conditions.
Eligible investment must be at least €2,000 excluding VAT. If you cannot deduct input VAT, the rules’ net amounts are treated as gross amounts; the authority may require proof. You may submit at most two applications per year, but cannot request funding twice for the same concrete measure, such as two window-replacement applications.
Payment follows completion of the agreed project and fulfilment of its conditions. Lower eligible final costs reduce the grant proportionately. You must provide the signed expenditure statement and any additional agreed documents within three months after completion; late submission can lead to cancellation of the agreement.
Get prior written approval for project changes, report delays or other departures immediately, and allow the required checks. Funding can be stopped or reclaimed for material false or incomplete information, misuse, breached conditions, or failure caused by you to complete the agreed project on time. Insolvency before completion or within five years afterwards, or permanent business closure within that period, also triggers recovery. On written request, the authority may waive recovery after checking an eligible successor who takes over the project and its obligations. False information or misuse/condition breaches also exclude a new application under this programme.
Eligibility
Your enterprise must be based in the state of Salzburg and the project must be located there. Eligible enterprises carry on an economic activity regardless of legal form, including sole traders and family businesses; agricultural businesses are excluded.
The employee limit is 20 annual full-time equivalents, excluding apprentices. The EU SME calculation includes partner enterprises proportionately and linked enterprises in full. From 17 employees, the authority requires the business’s annual payroll record. There must be no final administrative penalty or court judgment for intentional breaches of labour or social law in the 24 months before the funding decision; you must declare this in the application.
The grant is de minimis aid: together with linked businesses, your undertaking must remain within €300,000 of such aid granted by Austria over the rolling previous three years. Disclose all aid awarded in that period; the legal award date counts, rather than the payment date. The EU “single undertaking” test combines businesses linked by majority voting rights, the right to appoint or remove a majority of the management or supervisory body, contractual or constitutional dominant influence, or sole control of a majority of voting rights under an agreement with other shareholders or members, including indirect links.
The incorporated EU rules exclude primary fishing and aquaculture, certain price- or quantity-based support for processing and marketing fishery or agricultural products, agricultural support passed to primary producers, export-linked aid, and aid conditional on domestic goods or services. For mixed businesses, activities or accounts must be separated so excluded activities do not benefit. The programme’s agricultural-business exclusion still applies.
You must show the project can be financed. Do not combine this grant with another aid-law grant for the same project or costs, or split connected investment projects to obtain multiple grants. Disclose other applications for the same project and report subsequent changes immediately.
How to apply
- Status
- closes 31 Dec 2027
- Opens
- Closes
- Round restrictions
- Applications are accepted online until the annual budget is exhausted, no later than 31 December 2027.
- Apply before starting work or placing orders. A qualifying energy-check report no older than three years is required.
First arrange the independent, product-neutral “Energiecheck für Kleinbetriebe” with umwelt service salzburg. Its page offers registration and assignment of an adviser. The report must be no older than three years. Include the adviser’s recommended measures and quoted costs in your grant application.
Use the online application linked from Land Salzburg’s programme page. Postal, fax and email applications are not accepted. Submit before implementing the project, including placing orders or awarding contracts. The current intake runs until the annual budget is exhausted, no later than 31 December 2027.
Land Salzburg’s Economic and Research Funding unit decides applications on behalf of the Salzburger Wachstumsfonds. Supply missing documents by the authority’s deadline and sign and return the funding agreement within any deadline it sets. Investment and cost accounting should normally be completed within six months of receipt of the application. Submit the expenditure statement within three months of project completion.