Centre for Environment-friendly Energy Research (FME)

The call is open to approved Norwegian research organisations in binding cooperation with partners from other research organisations, trade and industry and the public sector.

See the list of approved Norwegian research organisations.

Businesses, public administration bodies and other societal actors must participate as user partners.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

• The Project Owner must be an approved research organisation.
• The research organisation defined as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved submission of the application.
• The Project Owner submits the application on behalf of all the partners.

Requirements relating to project management

• The project manager (centre director) must document experience of managing large-scale, complex projects.
• The project manager must be employed by the Project Owner or one of the partners.
• The application must include information about availability and how much time the project manager, work package leaders and, if relevant, other centre management staff are intended to spend on their tasks.

The project manager’s and other project management team members’ scientific expertise and suitability to manage the project will be assessed by a referee panel.

Requirements relating to partners

• The centre’s research will be conducted by research organisations in binding cooperation with relevant Norwegian trade and industry partners, public administration bodies and other societal partners. For more information about cooperation and roles, see the document Requirements and guidelines – Societal and Industry-oriented Research Centre. You will find a link to this document in the section “About the call for proposals’.
• The grant application must describe how the project incorporates the strategic objectives of all the partners.
• The centre must have three or more partners that are not research organisations and that provide funding to the project. These are described as user partners. The centre may also have international user partners. It must be documented how any international user partners will contribute to achieving the centre’s goals.
• The centre must have at least one international research partner, and preferably more.
• All partners must actively contribute in planning, following up and disseminating the results generated by the centre and in ensuring that new knowledge is applied.
• The number of user partners per FME has increased and is consistently high. This places great demands on the organisation of the centre. We encourage applicants to differentiate between companies/entities that actively participate in research and companies/entities that primarily participate as “listeners”, “problem owners” or similar. The former group may be given the status of user partners and be part of the consortium, while the latter group may have a looser connection to the centre and not be part of the consortium itself and the centre budget.
• The majority of the centre’s board members and the chair of the board must represent the user partners.

Scope of funding

User funding that is part of the centre may not be used as business funding for other Research Council funded projects at a later date. This also applies to user financing that is provided during the centre period.

• You can apply for funding to cover the actual costs necessary to carry out the centre’s activities. See the Research Council’s website for detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget.
• You can apply for NOK 120–200 million over an eight-year period. Three eights of the Research Council’s funding will not be paid until the last three years of the centre’s period of operation. The funding for the last three years will be decided on the basis of the outcome of an evaluation halfway through the period.
• To ensure flexibility, it is a requirement that at least 10 per cent of the Research Council’s funding is unappropriated from the third year onwards. For the final three years of the centre’s period of operation, up to 25 per cent of the Research Council’s funding may be unappropriated.
• Funding from the Research Council may be a maximum of twice the funding from user partners. Both cash contributions and the user partners’ work effort (in-kind contributions) can be included in the user funding. A certain balance between the proportion of in-kind contributions and the proportion of cash contributions from the user partners will be an advantage.
• In addition to funding from user partners, the host institution and other centre research partners can also contribute own funding, but this is not a requirement. It is not possible to use funding from other projects funded by the Research Council as part of the funding from the host institution and research partners. The extent of any own funding from the research organisations is not a factor in the application assessment.
• Stays abroad for research fellows at the centre and stays for guest researchers in Norway must be covered within the project budget.
• Some of the funding from the Research Council can be used to establish the consortium starting from 1 July 2024. The start-up date of the actual research activity in the centres will be 1 January 2025.

Conditions for funding

The Research Council will not award funding that constitutes state aid under this call. The project is to be implemented by means of effective collaboration, as defined in the state aid rules:

“Collaboration between at least two independent parties to exchange knowledge or technology, or to achieve a common objective based on the division of labour where the parties jointly define the scope of the collaborative project, contribute to its implementation and share its risks, as well as its results. One or several parties may bear the full costs of the project and thus relieve other parties of its financial risks. Contract research and provision of research services are not considered forms of collaboration.”

The following guidelines apply:

• Funding awarded to the research organisations participating in the centre is only to go to the organisation’s non-economic activity. It does not, therefore, constitute state aid. The Research Council requires a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non-economic activities.
• Undertakings may not receive aid to cover project costs. Industry stakeholders and others who are considered to be undertakings in the context of state aid rules will thus not be able to have any of their costs relating to participation in the centre covered.
• Ownership of project results must be regulated to ensure that undertakings participating in the centre do not receive indirect funding from participating research partners. Rights must therefore be regulated in accordance with the EFTA Surveillance Authority’s guidelines on state aid for research, development and innovation, Section 28. This means that intellectual property rights arising from the project must be allocated to the different project partners in a way that satisfactorily reflects their work packages, contributions and respective interests.

The Research Council’s requirements relating to allocations and disbursement of funding for the first year and any pledges and payments for subsequent years are set out in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects, available in their entirety on the information page What the contract involves.

If your project is granted funding, the following must be in place before you sign a contract with us:

• From 2022, all grant recipients that are research organisations or public sector bodies (Project Owners and partners) must have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) available on their website. The requirement does not apply to the business sector, special interest organisations or the non-governmental sector.
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access to scientific publications; see Plan S – open access to publications.
• The Project Owner of projects that process data must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised application. You can find more information here about the requirements for data management plans in projects that are awarded funding from us.
• The Project Owner organisation is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. This must be specified in the data management plan for the project.

We will disburse the funding in arrears. For more information about funding, see the document “Requirements and guidelines – Societal and Industry-oriented Research”. You will find a link to this document in the section “About the call for proposals”. All reporting takes place electronically.

The application must be based on a mandatory project outline with a deadline of 10 May 2023.

You may revise and resubmit your grant application form multiple times up to the application submission deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have filled in the grant application form and included all mandatory attachments. After the deadline, it is the most recently submitted version of the grant application that will be processed.

• The application and all attachments must be submitted in English.
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.
• All mandatory attachments must be included.
• Requirements relating to the Project Owner (research organisation) must be satisfied.
• Requirements relating to the partners must be satisfied.
• A maximum of ten CVs can be submitted.

Mandatory attachments 

• A project description of up to 20 pages in length. The project description must use the designated template which is available for download at the end of the call.
• the CV of the project manager (centre director) (maximum four pages), using the designated template found at the end of the call.
• the CVs of key project participants/work package leaders (maximum four pages), using the designated template found at the end of the call:
• Researchers submitting a CV must use the “Template for CV researchers".
• Persons submitting a CV who do not work for a research organisation can use the “Template for CV”.
• Letters of intent from the Project Owner and all registered partners, i.e. both user partners and research partners. Letters of intent may be no more than three pages long and must be written in English. The letters must include the following:
• The partner must confirm their intention to participate actively as a partner in the centre and describe how this will be done in practice.
• The partner must give reasons for their interest in participating in the centre. How will the centre’s activities benefit the partner and create opportunities that would not otherwise arise without the centre?
• What potential for innovation and sustainable value creation does the partner envisage from the centre’s expected results?
• How can the research results be used?
• The partner must summarise their contribution to the centre in the form of knowledge, expertise and, if relevant, funding, facilities and own efforts during the centre’s lifetime.
• The partner must describe their own long-term R&D plans and how this tallies with the centre’s strategic plans (strategic foundation).
• The letter of intent from the Project Owner must also contain a confirmation from the management of the Project Owner’s organisation stating that it will accept the obligations that follow from a contract with the Research Council. The letter must also describe what part the centre will play in the Project Owner’s scientific strategy.

Applications that do not meet the requirements listed above will be rejected.

Optional attachments

• Proposals for up to five referees who are considered qualified to assess the application.

All attachments must be submitted together with the application. We will not accept attachments submitted after the deadline for applications unless we have requested further information.

We will not assess documents and websites linked to in the application, or other attachments than those specified above. There is no technical validation of the content of the attachments you upload, so please make sure that you upload the correct file for the selected type of attachment.

We assess applications in light of the objectives of the application type in question and on the basis of the following criteria:

Under the fourth criterion, the application’s relevance is assessed in relation to the requirements that apply to the application type and the thematic and strategic priorities set out in the text of the call.

Where applicants are otherwise equally qualified, the Research Council will prioritise applications with female centre directors and centres with good female representation in leading positions.

Portfolio assessment

We will strive for a balanced project portfolio that covers the breadth of the areas described in the portfolio plan for Energy, transport and low emissions (sub-portfolio Energy and low emissions) and contributing to the implementation of the R&D strategy Energi21.
  
The marks awarded for the four main criteria will be decisive for which projects succeed in the competition.

Once the applications have been received, we will conduct a preliminary administrative review to ensure that they satisfy all the stipulated formal requirements. Applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements or thematic delimitations will be rejected. The same applies to applications that are not based on a project outline submitted by the deadline of 10 May 2023.

Approved applications will be assessed by a referee panel comprising scientific experts and experts with industry/social expertise of relevance to the thematic areas and disciplines in question. Assessments can also be obtained from external referees in order to assist the panel if required.

The referee panel will assess the criteria Excellence, Impact and Implementation. An overall mark is awarded for each of these criteria.

After the panel has completed its assessment, the Research Council will conduct an assessment of the relevance criterion. 

The overall mark awarded to the application is based on the relevance criterion and the panel’s assessment. The overall mark is calculated on the basis of the unweighted average of the four criteria. 

The Portfolio Board responsible for the energy field will make a decision on the allocation.

Before signing the contract, we will, in cooperation with the Project Owner, ensure that the project meets the overall framework of the call as regards the composition of partners, resource allocation, plans etc.

See also: Processing applications.

We expect to announce which applications have been awarded funding in April 2024.