20 November 2024: Clean Aviation’s third Call for Proposals, set to launch in February 2025, offers up to €380m in EU funding to accelerate innovation for decarbonising aviation. The funding is distributed across four key areas.

1. The Aircraft Concept Integration & Impact Assessment (ACI&I) area will allocate €15m to assess the integration and environmental impacts of new aircraft concepts.
2. The largest portion, €205m, is dedicated to Ultra-efficient Short-Medium Range (SMR) aircraft architectures, aimed at advancing technologies for short- to medium-range flights.
3. Another €145m will support innovations in Ultra-efficient Regional (REG) aircraft architectures, focusing on regional aviation solutions.
4. Additionally, a new €15m Fast Track Areas (FTAs) initiative will prioritise rapid, high-impact technological advancements. The FTAs aim to de-risk alternative or complementary solutions while encouraging participation from SMEs, universities and research centres, particularly in projects linked to SMR and REG technologies.

The Call for Proposals includes several milestones: a pre-publication of topics on 5 December 2024, the release of the draft work programme on 30 January 2025, and a brokerage event on 13 February 2025 in Brussels for networking and idea sharing. The official Call launches at the end of February, followed by an online info day on 4 March to provide guidance for applicants.

18 September 2023:  The Governing Board of the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking has approved €380 million for an additional eight new projects to accelerate aviation’s trajectory towards climate neutrality.

As a reminder the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking is a European Union research and innovation programme for transforming aviation towards a sustainable and climate-neutral future. It is a European public-private partnership between the European Commission through Horizon Europe [1], the EU research and innovation programme, and the European aeronautics industry. It has a budget of €4.1 billion divided into €1.7 billion in EU funding and no less than €2.4 billion in private funding.

The Governing Board of Clean Aviation has recently approved €380 million, including €152 million in EU funding, for eight daring Clean Aviation projects to pave the way for highly efficient aircraft by 2035.

These projects will complement those already funded under Clean Aviation’s first call for proposals and prepare all the necessary elements for ground and flight test activities starting in 2026. They will be helpful to reduce net emissions of GHG by 30 per cent for commercial flights.

The projects will have to cover the three main thrusts elaborated from the Clean Aviation Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda:

• EU funding for hydrogen-powered aircraft (representing €86 million)
• EU funding for hybrid-electric regional aircraft (representing €33 million)
• EU funding for short and medium range aircraft (representing €33 million)

In addition to this funding, a further €0.75 million is dedicated to impact monitoring of EU aviation research and innovation.