financial
The European Union is at the forefront of the global transition towards renewable energy. With ambitious targets set under the European Green Deal, the EU aims to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. This drive is supported by various grant funding initiatives, innovative projects, and the integration of advanced technologies. FI Group plays a crucial role in helping companies access these funding opportunities to achieve their renewable energy goals.
EU Grant Funding Initiatives
The EU has established several funding mechanisms to support renewable energy projects:
- Cohesion Fund: Aims to reduce economic and social disparities between EU countries and promote sustainable development by supporting projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase the use of renewable energy, and improve energy efficiency.
- Connecting Europe Facility (CEF): With a budget of €42.3 billion for 2021-2027, CEF supports investments in energy, transport, and digital infrastructure, with €8.7 billion allocated specifically for energy projects.
- European Investment Bank (EIB): Provides loans and financial instruments to finance energy projects and has launched the European Investment Advisory Hub to offer advice and expertise on project development.
- European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI): Mobilises private investment in strategically important projects, including renewable energy, power grids, and energy efficiency.
- European Regional Development Fund (ERDF): Finances programmes to make Europe more competitive, greener, and closer to citizens by supporting investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
- Horizon Europe: A research and innovation funding programme that invests around €5.6 billion to support the European Green Deal and accelerate the transition towards clean energy.
Examples of Awarded Grants and Projects
Several projects have benefited from EU grants. For instance, in 2025, the Innovation Fund supported 77 decarbonisation projects across 18 European countries. These projects aim to reduce emissions by approximately 397.6 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent over their first ten years of operation. Horizon Europe has funded numerous projects under its Cluster 5 ‘Climate, Energy and Mobility’ to support the REPowerEU initiative.
Grants for Households
The EU also provides grants to households to adopt green energy initiatives:
- Recovery and Resilience Facility: Dedicates €184 billion to energy-related measures, with €106.5 billion allocated to energy efficiency measures in public and residential buildings, including social housing.
- Cohesion Policy Funds: Support energy-efficient renovations of buildings, including insulation, heat recovery, and digitalisation of building systems.
The Role of Digital Technologies
Digital technologies are increasingly important in the renewable energy sector. Smart grids, for example, use digital communication technology to detect and react to local changes in usage, improving the efficiency and reliability of electricity distribution. Additionally, the Internet of Things (IoT) enables better energy management by connecting devices and systems, allowing for real-time monitoring and optimisation of energy use.
FI Group’s Role
At FI Group, we help companies navigate the complex landscape of funding opportunities. We provide expert consultation, analysing company projects, developing strategies, assisting in application submissions, and managing projects to ensure successful disbursement of funds. Our comprehensive International Grants Guide helps companies uncover public funding opportunities tailored to their needs, enhancing their projects and achieving their objectives.
Conclusion
The European drive towards renewable energy is supported by robust funding initiatives, innovative projects, and advanced technologies. FI Group’s expertise in accessing these funding opportunities ensures that companies can successfully contribute to Europe’s renewable energy goals, fostering a sustainable and climate-neutral future.
FI Testimonials is an FI Group campaign featuring a series of interviews in which we delve into how we assist our clients in nurturing their ideas and share our customers’ perspectives on our services. Through their testimonials, we explore various companies from diverse sectors as they share their innovation projects, the challenges they face, and how collaboration with FI Group has helped them achieve their goals.
Our second video features Horse Aveiro, a key player in the innovation of hybrid and electric propulsion systems. We had a chat with their Production Director, Leonel Simões, who shared how FI Group has been a key partner in their transformation!
Read the full interview below.
What is Horse Aveiro?
I’m Leonel Simões, production director of the mechanical and hybrid components department at Horse Aveiro. I’m also the director of Test Bed The Smart Lab Aveiro.
Horse Aveiro, formerly Renault Cacia, is a HORSE Powertrain Limited Group company, a joint venture owned by the Renault Group, Geely and Aramco. Horse Aveiro specialises in the production of gearboxes and mechanical components for traditional internal combustion engines. More recently, it has started production of an electric motor and a power management module, Power Electronic Box, which also allows Horse Aveiro to enter the world of sustainable motorisation, through innovative hybrid technologies.
At this moment in time, Horse Aveiro has around 1,500 employees and had a turnover of 450 million euros in 2024.
Can you tell us a bit about the project in collaboration with FI Group? What were the challenges encountered and the advantages of this collaboration?
In 2022, Horse Aveiro, which at the time was called Renault Cacia, began a transformation program in which it defined a series of strategic axes, including the development of the innovation ecosystem and digital transformation. Through these channels of growth and ecosystem development we encountered FI Group. Through our collaboration we quickly identified a series of projects and initiatives that were about to emerge or were already underway, such as, for example, the National Test Beds Network program, and we considered at the time that it was a relevant and effective project for us to be able to accelerate our entire digital transformation plan.
And so FI Group became our main partner in this project and helped us to identify our co-promoters in this project, which are the Brisa Group and Via Verde. This collaborative effort helped us to build the entire application for this project.
It’s actually a very strong application, not only because of its constituents but also due to its development content and value creation within the Test Bed framework. Therefore, it is a project that, given its robustness, allowed us to anticipate market consultation. We are talking about a six-month period before the government’s validation of this project. The market consultation aimed to identify SMEs and startups that could use the Test Bed as a testing platform for developing their businesses.
In terms of the concrete results of this collaboration, what impact is it having with Horse Aveiro?
This early consultation with SMEs and startups, six months before the validation of our application, was crucial for the results we are seeing now. We are perfectly on track to achieve the objectives set by IAPMEI, which must be met by the end of the grant program in September 2025. This includes completing all the pilots defined during the application phase: 59 pilots in total, with 9 for the Brisa and Via Verde Group and 50 from our side.
What do you think of FI Group’s support throughout this process? How do you think this experience has gone for both teams?
Indeed, this partnership with FI Group has proven to be a winning bet, as FI Group presents itself as the ideal partner and a perfect complement to our needs within this project. FI Group brings the experience and knowledge we need, especially in areas that are not our expertise, creating a team that allows us to address the various fronts required by this project. An experienced, available, and proactive team that makes this project very dynamic, productive, and even innovative. Every day, our interactions with the FI Group and the companies we work with open up new opportunities and perspectives in areas of our interest that we initially did not know how to approach.
Watch the video here
Grants and financial instruments
Grants are defined as a type of funding typically available to beneficiaries after successfully submitting an application related to a “call for proposals” managed by the EU, national or regional authorities. Grants can take various forms, e.g. as a reimbursement of eligible costs, of unit costs, as lump sums, flat-rate financing, or also a combination of these. Most EU grants are provided as co-financing so beneficiaries need to come up with at least half the necessary resources themselves.
Financial instruments are defined as funding provided in partnerships involving public and private institutions (e.g. under the EU shared management funds) in the form of loans, guarantees, equity, or quasi-equity. The main benefits of the financial instruments include that the money repaid by final recipients can be reused to support further investments (revolving effect), that additional public and private co-investments are potentially attracted (leverage effect), the nearness to the market, and their implementation by financial intermediaries contributing their own sector expertise (high impact).
A combination of grants and financial instruments can be of major help for the growth of startups, SMEs and other businesses, but also the realisation of policy objectives on a national or EU level, and address market failures related to a project’s viability and access to finance. The potential benefits of such combinations can for example include additional support, overcoming financial shortfalls where investments are unable to make enough profit or too risky for private investors, and a higher impact thanks to economies of scale.
Grant + equity schemes
Research and innovation (R&I) are crucial for the sustainable success and growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the EU. These make up 99% of all EU businesses, create ca. 100 m jobs, and are an essential source of entrepreneurship and innovation, both of them of crucial importance for the EU’s competitiveness.[1] The definition as an SME or startup is important for the access to finance and EU support programmes intended specifically for them[2]. SMEs and startups operate in a rapidly evolving and challenging environment that calls for investment and adherence to standards and regulations, also in light of their limited skills and financial resources.
Financial markets often fail to provide SMEs and startups with the funding they need. Horizon Europe, the EU’s R&I funding programme scheduled until 2027 involves the European Innovation Council (EIC), which supports game-changing innovations throughout the life cycle of start-ups and SMEs, from early research via the funding through to the scaling up, with a budget of EUR 10.1 bn.
The EIC provides funding by way of grants and investments both. The investments currently take the shape of direct equity or quasi-equity investments and are managed by the EIC Fund, whose main investors include the European Commission and European Investment Bank (EIB). One of the three funding and support options available in the EIC Work Programme 2024 is the EIC Accelerator designed to support SMEs, start-ups, spin-offs, and in exceptional cases also small mid-caps, in the development phase of products or services, in bringing their innovations to market and scaling them up where the risk involved is too high for private investors to provide all the required funding. Up to €2.5 m are available in grants for innovation activities, and up to €15 m in equity investments for the market launch and scale-up, all from the resources of the European Investment Bank (EIB). This new model now offers greater funding diversity and additional flexibility for the timing of investment support, permitting applicants to make separate decisions about the forms of funding in line with their company’s investment needs, market developments, and opportunities for attracting co-investors.
The most popular option is applying for blended finance, a combination of grant money and equity investment that must be defined at the time. Next come grants as initial funding, leaving the option to go for equity investments at a later stage, usually once the technology being developed has reached specific milestones. This blending model involving a mix of subsidies + equity for companies in need of funding is a good example for SME and startup support schemes in the growth and scale-up phase.
Grant + loan schemes, European Investment Fund, loans and micro-loans
The EIF oversees several mandates on behalf of the European Commission as well as national and regional managing authorities. Instead of the EIF providing funding or guarantees to individuals or companies directly, the final funding approval is the sole competence of the financial intermediary on a national level. The loans provided by the EIF can also be combined with funding from other EU sources (e.g. the EU budget), in a process known as blending.
For large companies, the EIF will cover investment costs (typically for a period of up to three years, but possibly longer), e.g. for research and development or the costs of facilities or activities, up to 50% of total project costs. These loans typically start at €25 m, but the EIF will also consider lower amounts in specific cases. This blending model involving a mix of grants + loans for companies in need of funding is a good example for profitable investment support schemes where businesses require liquidity to start investments capable of generating revenues that will enable them to repay their loans.
Combined RDI loans in Spain on a national level
A specific example of grant and loan combinations is provided by Spain’s combined RDI loans, which are overseen by the Spanish Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI).
This scheme foreseen a partly repayable loans (long terms loans at fixed interest rate below the market standards which include one part that should not be reimbursed) funded by central state budget resources. The aid intensity is up to 85% of the approved budget and the non-refundable component is between 10% and 33% of the aid. This combination could be implemented with EU funds in the 2021-2027 period, provided all other Common Provision Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2021/1060) rules are respected, (loan financial instrument cannot be used to pre-finance grants and grants cannot be used to repay the loan financial instruments).
[1] Source: European Commission – Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs.
[2] Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are currently defined in EU recommendation (N.2003/361).
Research and development plays a fundamental role in the advancement of science, technology and innovation. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries recognize the importance of encouraging investment in R&D to boost economic growth and improve competitiveness.
In this sense, many countries have implemented a series of tax incentives to promote investment in R&D. These incentives seek to reduce the costs (and cover the risk) associated with research and development, encourage collaboration between companies and research centers, and stimulate the creation of highly qualified jobs in the private sector.
Tax incentives for R&D
One of the most common incentives is the tax deduction for R&D activities. This scheme allows companies to deduct a percentage of R&D expenses from their tax base, which reduces the tax burden and increases the resources available for investment in research and development. Some countries offer additional deductions for the hiring of qualified personnel or for the acquisition of technological equipment.
Another incentive used in many OECD countries is the R&D tax credit. This mechanism allows companies to obtain a tax credit equivalent to a percentage of R&D expenses. Tax credit is a direct benefit that individuals can use to reduce the tax payable or even obtain a cash refund if the credit exceeds the tax owed, unlike tax deduction.
In addition to direct tax incentives, some OECD countries have implemented special regimes for research and development, which offer additional benefits, such as exemption from taxes on income derived from the exploitation of patents or reduction of taxes on profits from patents. capital obtained from the sale of assets related to R&D.
In many cases, R&D tax incentives are designed to encourage collaboration between companies and research centers. For example, some countries allow the transfer of R&D tax credits between companies, facilitating collaboration on joint research projects. Other incentives include the possibility of deducting R&D expenses carried out by third parties, such as universities or research centers, as long as effective collaboration is established.
R&D Tax Incentives Intensity Map
It is important to highlight that tax incentives for R&D vary significantly between different countries. Each country has its own regulatory framework and establishes its own conditions and requirements to access tax benefits. Some countries offer more generous incentives, while others have stricter requirements. Therefore, it is essential that companies interested in taking advantage of these incentives consult the current legislation in each country and obtain appropriate advice.
For this map to be representative of the different nature of R&D tax incentives (volume- based and incremental tax credits, super deduction), we took the scenario of a large company with R&D expenses during the last 10 years. Every year the amount of eligible R&D expenses is growing, as such, the claimant can apply for incremental R&D tax credits and deductions. The effective return on the R&D expenses is shown in the legend as a percentage of posttax reduction.
How can FI Group help you?
At FI Group we have extensive knowledge and experience in obtaining these tax incentives on different continents, with a global and coordinated strategy that is also complemented by the management and obtaining of public aid and subsidies for different types of investments. The combination of both incentives, from a strategic point of view and from a financial point of view, can mean for the company an important differentiation and competitive advantage within its scope of action.
FI Group has over 20 years of experience. Our specialized experts are at your disposal to analyze the fit of your project and advise you on obtaining tax incentives. Contact us.
Innovation and technological development lie at the core of FI Group’s DNA, filtering down through every member of the group. These elements are deemed indispensable for fostering growth and bolstering the competitiveness of any country.
This stemmed from the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Where both national and international policies strategically pivoted towards promoting investment in R&D&I and energy efficiency to reignite various sector’s work after the pandemic.
Regional, national, and European grants emerged as the primary public tools to drive economic revitalisation and foster growth across continents. Adequate public funding plays a pivotal role in facilitating the execution of large-scale R&D projects, which are critical for addressing the challenges posed by the prevailing political and economic landscape. These grants not only present opportunities for entities to confront these challenges but also serve as catalysts, inspiring innovation, differentiation, and investment to ensure development.
Currently, the continent boasts over 100,000 funding opportunities, encompassing regional, national, and European grants. Recognising the significance of these public funding opportunities, we have assembled a panel of experts from different countries to engage in a comprehensive discussion on the subject.
Among those attending this round table were:
1. First question: How many calls are there in each of your countries?
«Just imagine, according to the Spanish national database, in 2022 there were 62,817 calls for proposals,» –AV.
«At the regional level alone in this 2023, 459 calls have already been opened» –NZ.
«And we are only in May, we still have more than half the year ahead of us»- FAC to which Roberta explains that in Italy right now there are more than 650 published and waiting for the publication of another 97.
2. What do the calls for proposals mean for the different companies?
«I think we all agree that these calls for proposals, at all levels and for all types of companies, mean the possibility of making an investment or starting a project that would otherwise be difficult to carry out,» –VO.
«I totally agree. In addition to the fact that it makes it possible to grow the business and expand into new markets, and even to become known as a key player in the different sectors, especially in R&D calls,» –RD
«We cannot forget that it has an incentive effect, and that it also makes it possible to achieve results in a shorter period of time than would be possible without these calls». – AV
3. What role does FI Group play in the achievement of these objectives? How can we accompany the different companies in these processes of application to the different calls?
«At the level of the processes of fitting into the calls, application, monitoring and justification; for a company it is a tremendously bureaucratic and complex process. Being able to count on a trusted partner with years of experience is essential,» –AV *while her colleagues nod in agreement.
«With the support of a specialised agent or one that is close to the convening agency is a «privilege» that few actors have in this ecosystem. FI Group has a long experience and great success in all the stages that my colleague explained earlier,» -FAC
«We have teams of experts in both technical and financial areas, without forgetting that we are part of the ecosystem and know all the parties involved, being active and proactive in creating value propositions to improve the systems and funds so that they are more attractive and competitive,» –MO
«We also help to involve one or more stakeholders in relation to the sector or area, and we help and accompany them to improve collaboration. This is precisely due to a large global database of contacts that we have been working on during the 20 years of FI Group’s existence, which allows us to support our clients in an aggregated way, both at multi-country, multi-sector and multi-service levels».-RD
«Absolutely. To a great extent to the experience acquired, the knowledge, the connection networks, we have the capacity to offer this multi-country, multi-sector and multi-service service, but we also continue to do it as the first day, with an individual team per client, with an exclusive and close accompaniment, always making their project ours» –NZ
4. What are the most strategic sectors right now?
«I think we all agree that currently the most strategic sectors, not only for FI Group but for the whole of Europe and therefore for our clients, are industry in general and specifically all the electro-intensive ones, as well as everything related to energy, decarbonisation and hydrogen,» –NZ
«Automotive, ICT, Tourism, biotechnology, textile, chemical…». – MO
«From FI Group we continue and will continue to accompany all companies in achieving their objectives and their R&D&i projects, solving their doubts, finding the best fit in consortia or accompanying them in the justifications of the calls they have already achieved. This is and will be the driving force of all the colleagues who are part of this company». –VO
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The pandemic has led to a global economic and social crisis, and the European Union and Member States have had to adopt emergency measures. Among these, the creation of an exceptional temporary recovery instrument, the NextGenerationEU, has been agreed.
FI Group is an active player in multiple European countries that will benefits from NextGenerationEU. These countries include:
- Belgium
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Portugal
- Spain
FI Group has already developed a dedicated up and running Next Generation team in each of the countries listed. These teams are qualified to handle any questions or requirements your company might have regarding NextGenerationEU.
This recovery instrument is supported by 750 billion euros, part of which will be provided in the form of repayable loans (360 billion euros) and part of which will be provided in the form of non-repayable transfers (390 billion euros).
The EUR 750 billion will be distributed through different tools:
- EUR 672.5 billion through the Resilience and Recovery Mechanism
- EUR 47.5 billion distributed through ReactEU
- A further EUR 10 billion for the Just Transition Fund
- 7.5 billion which is earmarked for Rural Development
- 5 billion to be distributed through Horizon Europe and another 5.6 billion through InvestEU.
- RescEU will have a package of €1.9 billion
At FI Group we are supporting the entire value chain (startups, SMEs, large companies, knowledge centres, etc.) in areas such as:
- Agri-food
- Automotive
- Biopharma
- Digital Transformation
- Energy
- Industry
- Public Administrations
- Tourism
If you want to find out more about how your company could benefit, get in contact with our team today!
