Grants8 | The most comprehensive grants search on the web

Grant Analysis

Purpose & Target

The grant's core objective is 'Advancing Earth System Models to increase understanding of Earth system change'. It aims to enhance capabilities for predicting Earth system evolution and regional climate variability, including extreme events. It also seeks to strengthen collaboration in Earth system and climate modeling sciences, contributing to the next generation of Earth System Models (ESMs) and advancing the long-term science and evidence base for European and international policies.

Explicit identification of target recipient type and size: The grant is open to any legal entity, but its research focus is best suited for organizations involved in scientific research and development, such as universities, public research organizations, and non-governmental organizations. There are no specific size restrictions.
MUST state if grant is 'SECTOR-SPECIFIC' or 'SECTOR-AGNOSTIC': This grant is SECTOR-SPECIFIC, focusing on environmental science, climate science, and advanced modeling technologies.
Geographic scope and any location requirements: The grant targets organizations established in EU Member States, Horizon Europe Associated Countries, and a list of specific low- and middle-income countries. International cooperation, particularly with the Global South, is encouraged for capacity building.
Key filtering criteria for initial grant screening: Focus on advancing Earth System Models, understanding Earth system change, climate prediction, and strong emphasis on research and innovation actions (RIA).
Grant frequency and program context: This is a specific topic within the 'Horizon Europe Work Programme 2023-2025', under Cluster 5 'Climate, Energy and Mobility', Destination 1 'Climate Sciences and Responses'. While Horizon Europe is recurring, this specific call is for the 2025 Work Programme period.

Financial Structure

Funding amounts: The estimated budget for this topic is 15000000.0 EUR, with 2 expected grants. The minimum and maximum contribution per project is 7500000.0 EUR.
Currency: EUR.
Funding Rate: For 'Research and Innovation Actions' (RIA), the funding rate is 100.0% of eligible costs.
Eligible Costs: Grants take the form of a lump sum contribution, authorized under the Decision of 7 July 2021. The lump sum is an approximation of beneficiaries' underlying actual costs, covering direct and indirect costs.
- Direct cost categories typically include: Personnel costs (employees, SME owners, natural persons), Subcontracting costs, Purchase costs (travel, equipment, other goods, works, and services), Financial support to third parties (if allowed by call conditions), Internally invoiced goods and services, Transnational access to research infrastructure costs, Virtual access to research infrastructure costs, and PCP/PPI procurement costs (if applicable).
- Indirect costs are calculated at a 25.0% flat rate of the total eligible direct costs (excluding subcontracting, financial support to third parties, and any unit costs or lump sums that already include indirect costs).
Ineligible Costs: Any costs that would be ineligible under standard Horizon Europe rules should not be included in the lump sum estimation.
Payment Schedules: A pre-financing payment is normally provided at the start (typically 160% of average EU funding per reporting period). Interim payments are linked to periodic reports. The final grant amount is calculated after the project's end, based on a final report.
Financial Guarantees: An amount ranging from 5.0% to 8.0% of the maximum grant amount will be deducted from the pre-financing payment and transferred to the mutual insurance mechanism.
Audit Requirements: Checks, reviews, and audits will focus on the technical implementation of the action and the fulfillment of conditions for releasing lump sum contributions per work package, rather than financial ex-post audits. Beneficiaries have no obligation to document costs incurred for the action but remain subject to national accounting rules.

Eligibility Requirements

General Legal Entity Requirements

Any legal entity can participate, regardless of its place of establishment.
Entities must register in the Participant Register before submitting an application.
Affiliated entities are allowed if they are also eligible for participation and funding.
Entities without legal personality may participate if their representatives can undertake legal obligations and offer financial guarantees.
EU bodies and International European Research Organisations are eligible.
Associations and interest groupings may participate as 'sole beneficiaries' or 'beneficiaries without legal personality'; however, if the action is implemented by individual members, those members should participate as beneficiaries or affiliated entities.

Funding Eligibility (for beneficiaries)

To receive funding, applicants must be established in one of the following:
- EU Member States: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
- Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to EU Member States: Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curaçao (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
- Horizon Europe Associated Countries: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom.
- Specific low- and middle-income countries (list provided in General Annexes, too extensive to list here).
Entities from other countries may be eligible for funding if specified in the call/topic conditions or deemed essential by the granting authority.

Consortium Composition

A consortium is generally required, consisting of at least three independent legal entities.
Each entity must be established in a different country.
At least one entity must be established in an EU Member State.
At least two other independent entities, each established in different EU Member States or Associated Countries.
Affiliated entities do not count towards the minimum consortium composition criteria.
The Joint Research Centre (JRC), international European research organisations, and legal entities created under EU law are considered established in a Member State other than those of other participants.

Operational Capacity

Applicants must demonstrate the necessary know-how, qualifications, and resources to implement their project tasks.
This is assessed based on the competence and experience of applicants and their project teams, including operational resources (human, technical, etc.).
Public bodies, Member State organisations, and international organisations are exempt from this check.

Ethics & Security

Projects must adhere to ethical principles and applicable EU, international, and national law.
An ethics self-assessment is required as part of the application.
Projects involving EU classified information are subject to specific rules; projects classified as 'TRES SECRET UE/EU TOP SECRET' cannot be funded.
Security restrictions for the protection of European communication networks apply: Entities assessed as 'high-risk suppliers' of mobile network communication equipment (and any entities they own or control) are not eligible to participate as beneficiaries, affiliated entities, or associated partners.

Gender Equality Plan

Public bodies, research organisations, or higher education establishments (including private) from Member States and Associated Countries must have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP).
The GEP must be a formal, published document on the institution's website, signed by top management.
It must include commitment of resources/expertise, sex/gender disaggregated data on personnel (and students) with annual reporting, and training on gender equality/unconscious biases.
This criterion does not apply to private for-profit organisations (including SMEs), non-governmental, or civil society organisations.

Exclusion Criteria

Entities subject to EU restrictive measures (e.g., from Russia, Belarus, non-government controlled territories of Ukraine) are not eligible to participate in any capacity.
Hungarian public interest trusts established under Hungarian Act IX of 2021 (and entities they maintain) are not eligible for funded roles as of 16 December 2022.

Application Process

Application Procedure

Applications must be submitted electronically via the Funding & Tenders Portal electronic submission system.
Paper submissions are not accepted.
Use the forms provided in the electronic submission system; templates on the topic page are for information only.
Applications must be complete, readable, accessible, and printable.
A plan for the exploitation and dissemination of results, including communication activities, is required.

Application Timeline

Call Opening Date: 2025-05-06
Submission Deadline: 2025-09-24
Information on evaluation outcome: Approximately 5 months from the submission deadline (around February 2026).
Indicative date for grant agreement signing: Approximately 8 months from the submission deadline (around May 2026).

Required Documentation and Materials

Part A: Completed online with administrative information, summarized budget, and call-specific questions.
Part B: Technical description of the project (to be downloaded, completed, and re-uploaded as a PDF).
Annexes and supporting documents: To be uploaded as PDF files.
For lump sum grants, a detailed budget table is required to justify/fix the lump sum amount.
An ethics self-assessment must be completed.
The coordinator must confirm their mandate to act for all applicants and confirm compliance with EU funding conditions.
Each participant must sign a declaration of honour before the grant agreement is signed.

Submission Format

Part B of the application has a page limit of 50 pages for 'Research and Innovation Actions' (lump sum funded).
Any pages exceeding the limit will be automatically made invisible and not considered by evaluators.

Support Available

Guidance and assistance are available through the Horizon Europe Programme Guide, EU Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual, FAQs, Research Enquiry Service, National Contact Points, Enterprise Europe Network, IT Helpdesk, European IPR Helpdesk, and European Standards Organisations helpdesks.
A Partner Search function is available on the portal to help find collaborators.

Evaluation Criteria

The evaluation of proposals for 'Research and Innovation Actions' (RIA) like this one will be based on three primary award criteria, each scored out of 5: Excellence

Clarity and pertinence of the project's objectives.
Ambition of the proposed work and how it goes beyond the current state-of-the-art.
Soundness of the proposed methodology, including underlying concepts, models, assumptions, and inter-disciplinary approaches.
Appropriate consideration of the gender dimension in the research and innovation content.
Quality of open science practices, including the sharing and management of research outputs and engagement of citizens, civil society, and end-users.

Impact

Credibility of the pathways identified to achieve the expected outcomes and impacts as specified in the Work Programme.
The likely scale and significance of the contributions that the project will make.
Suitability and quality of the measures planned to maximise expected outcomes and impacts, as detailed in the dissemination and exploitation plan, including communication activities.

Quality and efficiency of the implementation

Quality and effectiveness of the overall work plan.
Thoroughness of the risk assessment and the appropriateness of mitigation measures.
Appropriateness of the effort assigned to different work packages and the overall resources allocated.
Capacity and specific role of each participant within the consortium.
The extent to which the consortium as a whole brings together all the necessary expertise and complementary skills.

Scoring and Thresholds

Each criterion ('Excellence', 'Impact', 'Quality and efficiency of the implementation') is scored out of 5.
A minimum threshold of 3 applies to each individual criterion.
An overall threshold of 10 applies to the sum of the scores for all three criteria.
To be considered for funding, proposals must pass both the individual criterion thresholds and the overall threshold.

Compliance & Special Requirements

Regulatory Compliance

Projects must comply with all applicable EU, international, and national laws and ethical principles (including research integrity).
Activities must focus exclusively on civil applications.
Specific exclusions apply: human cloning for reproductive purposes; heritable genetic modification of human beings (except for cancer treatment of gonads); creation of human embryos solely for research/stem cell procurement.
Projects must align with EU policy interests and priorities (e.g., environment, social, security, industrial policy).

Data Protection and Privacy

Personal data related to the application will be processed in accordance with Regulation 2018/1725, solely for evaluation, grant management, and program monitoring/evaluation/communication.

Intellectual Property Policies

Intellectual property rights (IPR), background, and results are governed by the grant agreement (Article 16 and Annex 5).
In case of a public emergency, beneficiaries may be required to grant non-exclusive licenses to their results for a limited period on fair and reasonable conditions to entities addressing the emergency.
The granting authority may object to transfers of ownership or exclusive licensing of results for up to four years after the project ends.

Security Requirements

The topic is 'subject to restrictions for the protection of European communication networks'. Therefore, entities assessed as 'high-risk suppliers' of mobile network communication equipment (and any entities they own or control) are not eligible to participate as beneficiaries, affiliated entities, or associated partners.

Project-Specific Scope and Focus

Actions should improve the simulation of the coupled Earth system and its sensitivity to forcings, addressing poorly understood processes, interactions, and feedbacks. This includes areas such as:
- The interplay between global change, regional climate variability, and changes in climate and weather extremes.
- Terrestrial-ocean-climate interactions.
- Coupled climate-carbon-water cycle feedbacks.
- Coupled climate-ocean-ice interactions.
- Aerosol-cloud-climate forcing and feedback.
- Climate-vegetation-fire interactions.
- Climate-air quality interactions.
- Interactions between land use scenarios and regional climate.
Increased collaboration across different model development approaches (various resolutions and realism) is expected.
Projects should utilize and improve existing and new observational/reanalysis datasets, models, emulators, and analysis tools for bias identification, calibration, validation, and evaluation.
State-of-the-art digital technologies like machine learning, big data analytics, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) should be exploited.
High standards of transparency and openness are required, including assumptions, protocols, code, and data managed in compliance with FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).
Open access to any new modules, models, or tools developed or substantially improved with EU funding is mandatory through documentation, model code, and input data availability.

Cross-Cutting Themes and Collaboration

Projects are strongly encouraged to connect, coordinate, and participate in networking, intercomparison, and joint activities to maximize synergies and complementarities.
Clustering activities with other relevant projects (within and outside Horizon Europe) are expected, particularly with 'HORIZON-CL5-2025-06-D1-01' and 'HORIZON-INFRA-2025-01-SERV-02'.
International cooperation is encouraged, especially with the Global South, to promote capacity and consensus building, for example, by training early career researchers.

Grant Details