Forty Billion At Seventy-Five A Tonne
The Innovation Fund is quoted as a EUR 40 billion programme. That figure is not a budget line. It is a multiplication.
The fund is financed from EU Emissions Trading System revenues, and its size is stated against one assumption printed on the programme page itself: a carbon price of EUR 75 per tonne. Forty billion divided by 75 is 533 million tonnes of allowances. Spread across the 2020 to 2030 window, it works out at roughly 48 million tonnes a year.
That is the design. The money is a function of the price, and the price is a function of the cap that produces it. If the average price comes in under 75, the fund is smaller than the headline, and nobody issues a press release about the difference.
What has actually been committed
Around EUR 13 billion has been awarded to roughly 240 projects so far. Both numbers are the fund's own. That is about a third of the headline figure carrying a project and a signature behind it.
The two percentages that decide a project
Grants cover up to 60 per cent of the relevant costs, calculated under the methodology fixed in each call.
The second number is the one to carry away. Up to 40 per cent of the grant can be paid against pre-defined milestones before the project is fully up and running.
A first-of-a-kind plant is not a software release. It is permits, an offtake, a supply chain and a construction schedule, and it produces nothing while it is being built. A fund that pays only once the asset is operating asks the company to carry the whole build. Paying 40 per cent against milestones is the difference between financing the project and financing a bridge loan for it.
The calendar gap
The IF25 Net-Zero Technologies call opened on 4 December 2025 and closed on 23 April 2026 at 17:00 Brussels time.
Evaluation results are due in the third quarter of 2026, which is now. The award of the grants is expected in the first quarter of 2027.
That is the best part of a year between the door closing and a signature. A company that filed in April has spent the whole second half of 2026 not knowing, and that cost never shows up in the financing rate.
What the fund has bought
The recent rounds give the size of the individual awards. The IF24 call put EUR 2.9 billion into net-zero technology projects. The IF24 battery call gave EUR 643 million to five electric vehicle battery cell projects. The IF24 auction awarded nearly EUR 1 billion for renewable hydrogen. IF23 committed EUR 4.8 billion.
Five criteria decide which projects are funded: the effectiveness of greenhouse gas emissions avoidance, the degree of innovation, project maturity, replicability and cost efficiency. Four of the five are about the project. One is about the money.
What to do with this week
None of the five criteria is a deadline, and the calendar is the part the fund cannot price.
IF25 opened on 4 December 2025. If the pattern holds, the next window opens in December. The projects funded in it are the ones whose emissions arithmetic, permits and offtake already exist on paper in September. The window is not open yet, which is the only reason the work is still an advantage. The probability that a project with a real emissions case reaches December without a written file is not small. It is close to certain, because no date in the calendar is forcing the work.