Programme Category
Programme Name
Programme Description
Horizon Europe is the European Union (EU) funding programme for the period 2021 – 2027, which targets the sectors of research and innovation. The programme’s budget is around € 95.5 billion, of which € 5.4 billion is from NextGenerationEU to stimulate recovery and strengthen the EU’s resilience in the future, and € 4.5 billion is additional aid.
Identifier Code
Call
Summary
Proposals are expected to address at least five of the following aspects:
- Provide better knowledge and understanding of the cumulative environmental impacts of the offshore wind energy deployment according to the EU targets, when added to the current and planned human activities carried out in the same areas;
- Expand existing studies, field monitoring, and analysis from local to larger areas, and from site- or species-specific impacts to more general ones. Further develop and deploy field monitoring activities, measuring multiple pressures and impacts on marine and coastal ecosystems and their services, as well as pollution, from installation to decommissioning and possible repowering, including operational phase and maintenance activities;
- Test and demonstrate field monitoring and modelling technologies that allow to go beyond state-of-knowledge, regarding life-cycle environmental impacts of offshore wind energy deployments;
- Improve instruments and models for Maritime Spatial Planning, and environmental assessments at plan and project level that are in alignment with public authorities’ needs;
- Improve modelling capacity and environmental impact assessments of future offshore wind deployment;
- Support the identification of areas where wind energy deployment is particularly suitable without significant environmental impact and areas where on the contrary, it should be avoided;
- Identify strategies, test, and demonstrate technologies that avoid, minimise, mitigate and compensate the environmental impact of bottom-fixed and floating offshore wind energy systems, propose mitigation and restoration measures and if feasible, provide net-positive environmental impacts. The activities carried out under this point are expected to achieve TRL 5 by the end of the project.
Particular attention must be dedicated to ensuring that the data produced in the context of this topic is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) and to leveraging existing community practices for data sharing especially those in the relevant European common data spaces and in the European Research infrastructures.
Detailed Call Description
The EU’s Offshore Strategy underlines that the deployment of offshore wind should be based on maritime spatial planning, assessing the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of the installations in a life-cycle perspective, while ensuring co-existence with other activities such as commercial and recreational uses of the sea and fishing. At the same time, it calls for research on the cumulative impacts of offshore energy generation on the environment, which was also underlined in the Communication on Delivering on the EU offshore renewable energy ambitions (2023).
Our knowledge on such impacts, positive and negative, is more advanced now than when the Offshore Strategy was adopted. However, there are still significant data and knowledge gaps. Most fieldwork studies have been carried out at very localised sites and often focused on specific species. These ad-hoc studies lead to conclusions that can hardly be generalised. A sound monitoring, measuring multiple pressures and impacts on ecosystems and their services, at wider scale and in interaction with other sea activities, is still largely missing. There is also a need to further develop models and other instruments for environmental risk assessment, identification of mitigation measures and recommendations for restoration measures, considering impacts during construction, operation and maintenance, repowering and decommissioning.
Improving instruments, data, and knowledge on the cumulative environmental impacts of offshore energy, as well as a sound monitoring, is key to ensure that its expected fast and large-scale deployment will be sustainable. It will also better equip the EU to contribute to mitigate such impacts and promote sustainable deployment of offshore wind at regional (e.g., through OSPAR[4] in the Northeast Atlantic) or subregional (e.g., through the Greater North Sea basin Initiative) level.
Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
- The scientific community, public authorities, project designers, permitting authorities, civil society organisations and citizens have better tools (including Maritime Spatial Planning tools), reliable data and knowledge to monitor, assess and minimise the cumulative environmental, including on biodiversity, and socio-ecological impacts of large-scale bottom-fixed and floating offshore wind energy generation, including at sea-basin level and when combined with other planned or existing human activities;
- The monitoring of cumulative environmental impacts, including on biodiversity, of offshore wind installations is improved, with better tools and open data, in a coherent scheme with pre-existing monitoring programs of the marine environment at large scale;
- Ambitious national and regional offshore wind deployment targets are achieved with positive or minimum negative impacts on the marine and coastal environment;
- Deploy offshore wind energy with minimal impact on marine and coastal ecosystems, and, if possible, with net-positive ones.
Call Total Budget
Financing percentage by EU or other bodies / Level of Subsidy or Loan
100%
Expected EU contribution per project: €5.00 million
Thematic Categories
- Culture
- Energy
- Environment and Climate Change
- Research, Technological Development and Innovation
Eligibility for Participation
- Associations
- Educational Institutions
- Legal Entities
- NGOs
- Other Beneficiaries
- Private Bodies
- Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
- Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
- State-owned Enterprises
Eligibility For Participation Notes
A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects.
Call Opening Date
Call Closing Date
National Contact Point(s)
Research and Innovation Foundation
Address: 29a Andrea Michalakopoulou, 1075 Nicosia, P.B. 23422, 1683 Nicosia
Telephone: +357 22205000
Fax: +357 22205001
Email: support@research.org.cy
Website: https://www.research.org.cy/en/
Persons to Contact:
Mr. Christakis Theocharous
Scientific Officer A’
Email: ctheocharous@research.org.cy
Mr. George Christou
Scientific Officer
Email: gchristou@research.org.cy