Call: Pilot Projects - Climate Change Mitigation

The LIFE programme is the EU’s funding instrument for the environment and climate action. The general objective of LIFE is to contribute to the implementation, updating and development of EU environmental and climate policy and legislation by co-financing projects with European added value.

The LIFE Programme shall in particular have the following general objectives:

• to contribute to the shift towards a resource-efficient, lowcarbon and climate- resilient economy, to the protection and improvement of the quality of the environment and to halting and reversing biodiversity loss, including the support of the Natura 2000 network and tackling the degradation of ecosystems;
• to improve the development, implementation and enforcement of Union environmental and climate policy and legislation, and to act as a catalyst for, and promote, the integration and mainstreaming of environmental and climate objectives into other Union policies and public and private sector practice, including by increasing the public and private sector's capacity;
• to support better environmental and climate governance at all levels, including better involvement of civil society, NGOs and local actors;
• to support the implementation of the 7th Environment Action Programme.

According to the LIFE Regulation, LIFE Climate Change Mitigation projects must be pilot, demonstration or best practise projects.

Projects under this priority area need to achieve a lasting change towards a low-carbon society. They will be evaluated on their EU added value, how they can create synergies with existing possibilities and how they can be replicated.

• to contribute to the implementation and development of Union policy and legislation on climate change mitigation, including mainstreaming across policy areas, in particular by developing, testing and demonstrating policy or management approaches, best practices and solutions for climate change mitigation;
• to improve the knowledge base for the development, assessment, monitoring, evaluation and implementation of effective climate change mitigation actions and measures and to enhance the capacity to apply that knowledge in practice;
• to facilitate the development and implementation of integrated approaches, such as for climate change mitigation strategies and action plans, at local, regional or national level;
• to contribute to the development and demonstration of innovative climate change mitigation technologies, systems, methods and instruments that are suitable for being replicated, transferred or mainstreamed.

• Energy intensive industries
• Fluorinated greenhouse gases
• Land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF)

A pilot project means project that applies a technique or method that has not been applied or tested before, or elsewhere, that offers potential environmental or climate advantages compared to current best practice and that can subsequently be applied on a larger scale to similar situations. These projects aim to assess the effectiveness of the method, to inform other stakeholders of the results and to encourage them where appropriate to use the techniques and methods successfully tested in the project.

A proposal may be submitted by any legal person registered in the European Union.
Entities participating in the proposal may fall into three types of beneficiaries: (1) public bodies, (2) private commercial organisations and (3) private non-commercial organisations (including non-governmental organisations, NGOs).

Partners are not mandatory. Transnational Projects have a priority though.

There is no pre-defined project duration under the LIFE+ Programme. Usually projects last for 2 to 5 years.

The maximum EU co-financing rate for LIFE action grant projects is 55% of the total eligible project costs.

There is no fixed minimum size for project budgets. While large ambitious projects (i.e. over 5 million € total costs) have been financed several times in the past, small projects (i.e. below 500 000 € total costs) have seldom succeeded due to the limited output and consequently the low added value.

For detailed information on LIFE national contact points, please follow this link.