June 3, 2021

The new partnership aims to mobilise investments of up to €820 million between 2022-26 to build large-scale, commercial demonstration projects for clean technologies – lowering their costs, accelerating their deployment, and delivering significant reductions in CO2 emissions, in line with the Paris Agreement.  

The European Commission-Breakthrough Energy Catalyst partnership will target technologies with a recognised potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but which are currently too expensive to get to scale and compete with fossil fuel-based incumbent technologies.  Support will take the form of financial instruments and grants. The EU funding for the partnership is envisaged from Horizon Europe and the Innovation Fund, within the framework of InvestEU, and according to the established governance procedures. The Breakthrough Energy Catalyst Programme will mobilise equivalent private capital and philanthropic funds to finance the selected projects. The partnership will also be open to national investments by EU Member States through InvestEU or at project level.

The partnership will focus on a portfolio of EU-based projects, in sectors with a high potential to help deliver on the economic and climate ambitions of the European Green Deal, either by reducing emissions or by removing carbon from the atmosphere.

“The European Commission will mobilise massive investments in new and transforming industries over the next decade. This is why I'm glad to join forces with Breakthrough Energy. Our partnership will support EU businesses and innovators to reap the benefits of emission-reducing technologies and create the jobs of tomorrow.”

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission

The objective is to scale up key climate-smart technologies and speed up the transition towards sustainable industries in Europe. This is particularly important in a context where the technologies needed to fight climate change already exist but need to be met with appropriate levels of financing and the right systemic conditions for their deployment. To enable these technologies to have a real impact on climate and the greenhouse effect their implementation needs to happen now.

Negative emissions technologies would require an annual growth rate of over 55% to reach the levels recommended by the IPCC. It is estimated that delaying the scale up to 2025 would require an annual growth of 80%, while starting such a deployment in 2030 means that carbon removal capacity will need to double every year – a 100% annual growth. Public-private partnerships such as the one between the European Commission and Breakthrough Energy function as a way to deliver support of the scale needed by this new technological sector.