The European Islands Facility NESOI, with the objective of facilitating the energy transition on islands, has completed the evaluation of its first call for applications: at least 28 project proposals out of the eligible 74 will receive funding and technical support to develop their islands energy projects.
In a first effort to engage European Island communities in its energy innovation programme, the European Island Facility NESOI is pleased to announce the results of the 1st Open Call launched on 12th October 2020.
NESOI received 117 proposals from 14 countries involving over 100 islands. Out of the 117 submissions, 74 project proposals were considered eligible for funding. Currently, the facility aims to support at least 28 island projects from 10 different countries – with a reserve list of projects to potentially fund at a later stage.
The total projects submitted were mostly split between the east Mediterranean (35%) west Mediterranean (35%), the Atlantic (25%) and the Baltic (5%) – see figure 1. NESOI aims for a balanced geographical coverage of selected funded projects.
Figure 1
The proposals received covered different maturity levels - see figure 2. In this first phase, 60 % of the projects received were at the Conceptual Design level meaning that the beneficiary has identified single or aggregated projects of interest for the island, but no previous significant activities have been carried out. 30% of the projects were at Entry level whereby no previous significant exhaustive planning carried out by beneficiary and 10% at Deployment level meaning beneficiary has identified single or aggregated actionable projects, verified their feasibility, and intends to implement it/them.
Figure 2
Project coordinator Andrea Martinez said of the initial results: “We are happy of the great results and enthusiastic response from islands. Congratulation to all the NESOI partners who have put great efforts to achieve such a result. We believe that the activation of our projects will contribute to the achievement of the Green Deal objectives and can be strategic for the recovery plan.
The NESOI partners have initiated a dialogue with the selected projects towards the execution of grant agreements and clarification of exact contractual requirements. It is expected that the selected projects will begin their activities in the first week of May. A second call for applications will be announced in the Autumn of this year.
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About NESOI
The European Island Facility NESOI is an interdisciplinary group of experienced partners including analytic and financial specialists, technical, legal and procedural experts as well as consultants on environmental and social issues that have joined forces to help island communities achieve more efficient and sustainable energy solutions, in line with the EU’s clean energy priorities, through the funding, supporting and monitoring of energy projects lead by local authorities and island energy communities.
The NESOI consortium is made up of 10 recognised organisations from 7 different EU member states led by SINLOC - Sistema Iniziative Locali, R2M Solution, RINA Consulting, ZABALA Innovation Consulting, Hellenic Association for Energy Economics, Fundacion CIRCE Centro de Investigacion de Recursos y Consumos Energeticos, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, E.ON Group Innovation, Deloitte Advisory and WOLF THEISS.
Starting in 2019 and ending it 2022, the EU Islands Facility NESOI was awarded €9.996.00 million by the European Commission through the Horizon2020 Programme under grant agreement number 864266.