LIFE DIGITAL — Skills and planning for smarter electricity networks
Grants for consortia helping electricity distribution network operators build staff skills and digitalisation roadmaps for integrating clean energy.
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Help the organisations that operate local electricity networks use existing digital tools more effectively. The work can cover data sharing, network monitoring and safe use of artificial intelligence to improve grid operations. This supports integration of distributed clean-energy resources and reduces energy losses and renewable-energy curtailment, where generation has to be limited because the network cannot accommodate it.
Develop a tailored digitalisation roadmap for each operator and support its inclusion, fully or partly, in the operator’s Distribution Network Development Plan: its plan for developing the electricity network. Include staff training, technical assistance and feasibility pilots using available solutions. Reach a substantial number of operators, transfer knowledge to additional operators through activities such as networking and pairing, and show how the approach can expand nationally or across borders.
The 2026 grant reimburses up to 95% of eligible project costs. The European Commission considers an EU contribution of up to EUR 2 million appropriate, but proposals may request other amounts. The remaining share can come from private or non-EU public funds; your organisation is not required to provide it entirely from its own resources. Grants cannot produce a profit; for-profit beneficiaries must declare project revenues, and any profit reduces the final grant.
This is support for skills, planning and technical assistance, rather than network investment. Operators remain responsible for paying for hardware and software investments. Infrastructure is ineligible. Limited equipment indispensable for the project may qualify, but only the portion of its cost allocated to the project period through depreciation—spreading the cost over its useful life—can be claimed, rather than its full purchase price. Developing or demonstrating new technologies and distributing onward grants to third parties are outside this topic.
Eligibility
- Apply as a group of at least three beneficiaries from three different eligible countries. Affiliated entities do not count towards this minimum. Beneficiaries are normally public or private legal entities established in EU Member States, including overseas countries and territories, or Iceland, Moldova, North Macedonia, Montenegro or Ukraine. The coordinator must be established in an eligible country.
- Serbian entities could apply to the 2026 call, but ordinary EU funding depended on successful association negotiations covering that call. Other nonparticipating-country entities normally bear their own costs; exceptional funding requires CINEA to find their involvement essential and impossible without EU funding. They cannot coordinate.
- Individuals are ineligible except sole traders whose business has no separate legal personality. International organisations can participate without the country-location restriction. An entity without legal personality may exceptionally participate if its representatives can assume legal obligations and provide equivalent safeguards for EU financial interests.
- All sizes of distribution system operator (DSO) can participate; the focus on small and local operators is not a size limit. Gas DSOs may apply if they meet the general rules, but their proposal must address the topic’s electricity-network digitalisation challenges.
- Identify the operators you will support and demonstrate their commitment through consortium participation or tailored executive-level letters of support. If national rules exempt an operator with fewer than 100,000 connected customers from preparing a network development plan, its roadmap can remain a standalone investment-ready output.
- Activities normally take place in eligible countries. Work elsewhere must be necessary for EU environmental and climate objectives and for interventions in eligible countries to be effective.
- Your group needs sufficient financial resources and relevant staff expertise and experience. Entities subject to EU restrictive measures cannot participate in any role. Hungarian public interest trusts under Act IX of 2021 and entities they maintain cannot participate in funded roles. EU bodies are excluded except the Commission’s Joint Research Centre.
- Subcontracting normally cannot exceed 30% of total eligible costs. A justified exception is possible when necessary skills are unavailable. Procurement must offer best value or the lowest price, avoid conflicts of interest and follow applicable public-procurement law.
- The same action normally cannot receive a second EU grant, and the same costs cannot be claimed twice. An EU operating grant may be combined only where this project is outside its work programme and costs are separately accounted for.
How to apply
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- Conditions de cette période de candidature
- The 2026 intake is closed.[^c31]
The 2026 intake is closed. Use CINEA’s official call page to read the historical terms and access the LIFE-2026-CET-DIGITAL topic in the EU Funding & Tenders Portal.
For that intake, all beneficiaries, affiliated entities and associated partners had to register for a participant identification code before submission. The consortium coordinator submitted electronically through the Portal using its forms, including the technical proposal, detailed budget and participant-information annex. The technical proposal was limited to 65 pages. Proposals could use any official EU language, with the abstract in English; grant management and reporting are in English.
Explain the operators’ starting position, what support you will provide and how it will be delivered. Quantify expected results at project end and five years later, including relevant training, roadmaps and clean-energy impacts. Even a project centred on skills and roadmaps needs a credible method to estimate resulting energy savings.