LIFE RENEWHC — Grants to improve heat-pump and solar-thermal markets
Grants for international partnerships to remove regulatory and financing barriers to heat pumps and solar thermal in existing buildings.
Ta możliwość jest obecnie dostępna po angielsku.
LIFE RENEWHC supports national platforms that bring public authorities and market participants together to make alternative heating business models easier to use, such as leasing equipment or buying heating as a service. Your project can assess barriers, model changes to rules and incentives, and develop tools that make prices and consumer offers easier to compare. The work must target three to five LIFE-eligible countries.
The business models must provide at least space heating. They can also cover hot water and cooling. New heating or cooling networks, including small networks, are outside this topic. Projects focused on local heating and cooling plans have a separate LIFE topic.
For the 2026 call, the grant reimbursed up to 95% of eligible project costs. The Commission considered an EU contribution of up to €2 million appropriate, but allowed requests for other amounts. Infrastructure costs are ineligible. Limited equipment costs may qualify only when indispensable for the action, such as monitoring or testing equipment, and only through depreciation: the share of the equipment’s cost attributable to its use during the project. You cannot use this grant to award grants to organisations outside the partnership.
Your proposal must explain the results and how they produce the intended impacts, using realistic assumptions and a clear starting point. Quantify results and impacts both at project end and five years afterwards.
Eligibility
The following conditions applied to the 2026 call:
- Apply with at least three beneficiaries from three different eligible countries. Affiliated entities do not count towards this minimum. The coordinator must be established in an eligible country.
- Applicants are public or private legal entities established in the EU, including its overseas countries and territories, or a participating LIFE country. The published non-EU list includes Iceland, Moldova, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Ukraine. Norway and Liechtenstein do not participate.
- Applicants from countries negotiating association can participate, but funded grants require an association agreement in force by the end of the selection procedure and covering this call. Serbia was listed as negotiating; the CET FAQ makes its funding conditional on a successful agreement covering the 2026 call. If that agreement does not cover the call, Serbian entities may participate as beneficiaries without EU funding; exceptional funding remains possible when their participation is essential.
- International organisations can qualify without the country-location rule. An organisation from another country can exceptionally receive funding if CINEA considers its participation essential. Individuals cannot apply, except self-employed sole traders whose business has no separate legal personality. Entities without legal personality may exceptionally participate through representatives able to take legal obligations and provide equivalent protection for EU financial interests.
- Include the relevant heating providers, installers, investors, finance organisations, utilities, consumer associations and competent public authorities, regulators, energy suppliers and distribution system operators in the national platforms. Demonstrate their interest and commitment through consortium participation or tailored, detailed support letters. Letters from authorities must state their competence in the matter.
- You may focus exclusively on solar thermal or heat pumps, including heat pumps with photovoltaic systems. Justify the technology choice and show the commitment of the broad range of actors needed for the project.
- Activities must take place in eligible countries. Activities elsewhere are permitted only when necessary for EU environmental or climate objectives and for effective interventions in eligible countries.
- Your partnership must have sufficient financial resources, skills and experience to deliver the work and contribute its share. Where members of an association implement the work, those members must also participate as beneficiaries or affiliated entities for their costs to qualify.
- EU bodies cannot join the consortium, except the European Commission Joint Research Centre. EU sanctions exclude participation in any role. EU conditionality measures exclude funded roles, including Hungarian public interest trusts established under Act IX of 2021 and entities they maintain.
The grant cannot produce a profit. Declare related EU funding and applications. The same action ordinarily receives only one EU action grant, and no cost can be charged to two EU grants. An EU operating grant can be combined only where this project is outside its work programme and the costs are kept separate.
How to apply
- Status
- zamknięte
- Otwiera się
- Zamyka się
- Warunki naboru
- The 2026 single-stage intake is closed.
The 2026 single-stage intake is closed. Use CINEA's official RENEWHC page to read the call and its Funding & Tenders Portal topic information.
Applications for that round were submitted electronically through the European Commission's Funding & Tenders Portal, using the forms in its submission system. Beneficiaries, affiliated entities and associated partners had to register beforehand and obtain a participant identification code (PIC). Beneficiaries and affiliated entities are validated before the grant is signed; associated partners participate without funding.