In episode #240 & #241 of The Grant – the EU funding podcast, I havea two-part deep dive into proposal writing for the Innovation Fund with Irene Larroy from EY and Marco Molica Colella from Hydrogen Europe. Irene has worked with the programme both as an evaluator and as an adviser to applicants, while Marco brings extensive hands-on experience from EU consultancy and his current role as Funding and Innovation Director at Hydrogen Europe.

Part 1

We focus specifically on the Innovation Fund’s traditional grant or Net-Zero Technologies calls, rather than the auction mechanism. And before we even start talking about writing, Irene makes the first important point: this is an extremely competitive programme, so the real work begins by determining whether the project is genuinely a strong Innovation Fund candidate. The practical approach is to stress-test the project against the evaluation criteria before committing to the application: degree of innovation, greenhouse-gas emission avoidance, maturity, replicability and cost efficiency. In this first episode, we zoom particularly into innovation. Marco explains why you need to understand not only whether the technology is innovative, but whether its specific innovative element is strong enough relative to what already exists and what the Innovation Fund has already supported. Irene therefore recommends using the Innovation Fund project dashboard extensively and reading the annexes to the call documentation—especially the annex defining different levels of innovation. The broader lesson is that Innovation Fund proposal development can involve redesigning the project itself, not merely improving the way an existing project is described.

Part 2

In part 2 we look at how to organise the writing process, why Part B should largely be built after the feasibility study, business plan and financial models have matured, and how to handle the many interconnected annexes without creating inconsistencies. Irene and Marco then take us through project maturity, GHG emission avoidance, risk, replicability, cost efficiency, work packages and final submission, with a recurring message throughout: a strong Innovation Fund proposal depends on consistency, clear navigation for evaluators and enough time and internal capacity to manage a very complex application.

Time codes (part 1):

01:55 Guest introduction and fly in

06:00 Preparation

31:35 Shaping of proposal concept with consortium

Time codes (part 2)

02:04 Pen to paper - The Annexes

28:12 Pen to paper - Part B

01:01:17 Submission

01:10:59 Reflections and advice

01:22:50 The toughest challenge