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The European Commission has launched 51 calls for research together with the announcement of a €6.4 billion fund for research projects, including on climate change and energy-efficiency of buildings. The initiative is part of the EU’s Innovation Strategy and the European Innovation Partnerships, which will officially be launched this autumn.

The Irish Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn is the first to be in charge of the combined research and innovation portfolio that until the end of 2009 had been under the sceptre of different Directorate Generals (DGs). In this capacity, she announced this week nearly €6.4 billion of investment in research and development to be spent by the end of 2011.

“We are offering researchers and innovators €6.4 billion for cutting-edge projects focusing on big economic and societal challenges,” Geoghegan-Quinn said at the press conference in Brussels on 20 July 2010. “This is a huge and efficient economic stimulus and an investment in our future.”

The objectives are to enhance Europe's competitiveness and to lead the Union towards sustainable and equitable growth. The Commissioner expects with the stimulus package to create around 165,000 jobs, involving 16,000 researchers and employees of 3,000 SMEs in research projects centred around climate change, energy, food security, health and the ageing population.

Call title "Energy-efficient Buildings" - 2011

€85.5 million are earmarked for energy-efficient building. The topics called for in this context are i.a.

• New efficient solutions for energy generation, storage and use related to space heating and domestic hot water in existing buildings (EeB.NMP.2011-2)
• Technologies for ensuring, monitoring and/or controlling a high quality indoor environment particularly in relation to energy efficient buildings (EeB.ENV.2011.3.1.5-1)
• Demonstration of very low energy new buildings (EeB.ENERGY.2011.8.1-1)

Other calls include amongst others:

• Low/Medium temperature solar thermal systems for industrial process heat (ENERGY.2011.4.1-2)
• Materials for thermal storage systems Collaborative Project ( ENERGY.2011.4.1-3)
• Advanced compact storage systems ( ENERGY.2011.4.1-4)
• Advanced heat transfer fluids for CSP technology (ENERGY.2011.2.5-2)

Dividing the cake

Out of the total fund, €1.3 billion are reserved for scientists funded by the European Research Council, €1.2 billion go to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) research, €800 million are earmarked for SMEs, €600 million for health-related research and about €200 million for environment research projects. The Commission is furthermore introducing this year steps to speed up sharing of environmental research results: beneficiaries of EU grants will commit to making freely available – after a certain embargo period - publications arising from their research.

Many of the calls that form part of the 2011 package were announced this week; others will follow later. Once a call has closed, evaluations are carried out during the following two to three months, with the first evaluation results available three to four months after the deadline. The Commission aims to reduce the average time needed to complete signing the contracts, which currently stands at 350 days after the closure of the call, by improving and simplifying procedures.

One of the European Commission's endeavours is to bring research discoveries quickly into mainstream use. The grants will be awarded through "calls for proposals" and evaluations over the next 14 months. 51 calls were published on 20 July, deadline for submitting proposals is 2 December 2010.

The European Commission is furthermore expected to publish by the end of September 2010, in time for the autumn summit of the European Council, a new research and innovation strategy which will take an important place in the wider EU 2020 strategy.