The EU has signed grant agreements with six additional projects through its innovation fund, following the earlier withdrawal of eight projects from the process.
The projects, which will receive "nearly" €319mn between them, aim to reduce emissions by a total of 24.1mn t of CO2 equivalent over their first decade of operation, the European Commission said.
The beneficiaries include carbon capture and nitrogen oxide reduction facility Arcade at oil major TotalEnergies' Antwerp refinery in Belgium, utility Iberdrola's Grhena green heat generation hub at the chemical industrial park in Tarragona, Spain, and large-scale ocean wave electricity generation project VianaWave, developed by Swedish firm CorPower Ocean in Portugal and Sweden.
The Lars pre-treatment and chemical recycling plant for mixed plastic waste — developed by recycling firm GreenDot in Germany and designed to generate pyrolysis oil as an alternative to fossil-based raw materials — will also receive funding, as will two hydrogen facilities.
These include Norwegian refiner Equinor's H2M Eemshaven low-carbon hydrogen plant in the Netherlands, which is expected to have a capacity of 1GW, and Green Power Storage Solutions' Echo-Wave facility in Luxembourg, which plans to produce hydrogen from wind and agrivoltaics, and was awarded funding by the country's government earlier this year.
The projects were originally submitted to the 2023 general call for net zero technologies under the innovation fund, which draws on revenues from the bloc's emissions trading system to stimulate low-carbon technology development.
