Demonstration Project for the Industrial Sector

The formal applicant must be a supplier company (defined as an “undertaking” in the state aid rules) that has been issued an enterprise number under the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and that carries out economic activity in Norway.

The Project Owner (company) may apply for funding to carry out the project in binding cooperation with other companies (partners). Sole proprietorships and research organisations are not eligible to serve as the formal applicant.

The Project Owner is required to carry out the project in collaboration with end-users of the technology.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The Project Owner must be able to secure project funding (in addition to any Research Council funding) and to implement other measures needed to utilise the project results in connection with its own activities.

Collaboration and roles in the project

• The Project Owner is required to carry out the project in collaboration with one or more end-users of the technology. End-users are normally oil companies, but shipowners, suppliers or others operating within the petroleum industry may also be relevant. These partners will benefit from the Research Council’s project support, and are therefore defined as recipients of state aid.
• Letters of Intent/Interest from the end-users describing their financial and professional commitments must be attached to the grant application.
• Company partners may not have the role of both partner and supplier of R&D services in the same project. 
• Research groups may take part in the project if they have responsibility for carrying out specific R&D activities. These partners (suppliers of R&D services) may only serve as task-performing partners, and the company partners collaborating in the project will be responsible for financing the costs of their participation. It is presumed that R&D suppliers are not in a dependent relationship with any of the company partners, i.e. they operate according to the arm’s length principle.
• Company partners that are in a mutually dependent relationship with one another will be considered to be one and the same recipient under the state aid rules.
• A Demonstration Project may involve international cooperation, and companies from other countries may participate as partners. However, non-Norwegian partners are required to fund their participation in the project themselves. Their costs will not be eligible for support from the Research Council.

About Demonstration Projects

• Demonstration Projects build on a specific innovation produced by the companies participating in the project. The innovation can be in the form of a new product, service or production process, or a new means of delivering products and services. The innovation may also entail significant improvements in or new characteristics of existing products, processes or services.
• Companies need to demonstrate and verify technology/innovations in order to successfully introduce their product on the market and move forward with commercialisation. It is this need for development (“experimental development”) that the project is to cover.
• The scope and risk profile of the project must be such that the companies would not be able to carry out the project without public funding. This means that support from the Research Council will be essential to reducing risk sufficiently for the participants to implement the necessary R&D activities. Project funding should also be crucial to obtaining private investment in the company for the development and realisation of the innovation.
• The Demonstration Project must incorporate clear targets and a concrete plan for carrying out the R&D activities under the project and for utilising the results. Grant proposals must provide a description of the users to be involved in the specific project. It is important that the anticipated benefits of the project are based on user needs and documented knowledge gaps within the thematic areas described in the text of the call. Both short- and long-term impacts and outcomes are to be described in the grant application.
• Demonstration and qualification activities are to be carried out under realistic conditions offshore or in suitable facilities on land. The project description must include a clear plan for these activities.

What types of costs may be covered?

It is possible to seek funding to cover part of the costs of company partners for R&D activities performed under the project. This encompasses both a company’s own expenses for performing R&D activities itself and costs for procurement of R&D services from qualified suppliers. Project costs are actual costs that are necessary for the execution of the project, and are categorised as follows:

• Direct project expenses: costs related to resources set aside specifically for project implementation, for example, payroll costs for project staff.
• Indirect project expenses: costs related to the use of general resources that the project benefits from. Indirect project costs include the project’s share of the cost of rental of office space, IT/telephone and other joint administrative services for personnel, accounting and financial management.

In the grant application form, the Research Council requires you to break down the project budget into the following cost categories:

• Payroll and indirect expenses: costs of R&D activities performed by the company’s R&D staff for the project.
• Procurement of R&D services: costs of contracting R&D suppliers to perform R&D activities for the project.
• Equipment: costs related to the operation and depreciation of scientific equipment necessary for the execution of the project.
• Other operating expenses: other project costs related to R&D activities to be performed under the project.

Please refer to the Research Council’s guidelines for calculating payroll and indirect costs and costs for equipment in the project budget.

What types of costs may not be covered?

The Research Council can not cover costs for other types of activities and measures to exploit R&D results, such as: filing for patents, market surveys, marketing. Commercial rig rates or equipment/datasets provided free of charge will not be approved as project costs.

Scope of funding

• The project must primarily involve R&D activities that are categorised as “experimental development”. The project may also include some activities that are categorised as “industrial research”.
• The state aid rules regulate the types of activities and costs that the Research Council can help to cover, while also setting limits for the aid intensity allowed. Support from the Research Council may cover up to 25 per cent of the costs to companies of conducting R&D activities within the R&D category “experimental development”.
• Together the applicant company and participating end-users must cover a significant portion of the project costs.

Conditions for funding

• If the project is awarded funding, the participating companies must submit a declaration confirming that they are qualified to receive state aid.
• Other public funding to the project, or to activities under the project, will affect the amount of funding that the Research Council can provide.
• Allocated state aid of EUR 500 000 or more will be announced in a public register.

The Project Owner (company) is responsible for selecting the archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. The Project Owner must specify the planned solution(s) in connection with the revised grant proposal.

The project description is to be submitted using the designated template for Demonstration Projects. 

The templates for attachments will be made available soon and well before the date on which you can create a grant application.

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 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.

• Grant applications and all attachments, may be submitted in Norwegian or English.
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.

Mandatory attachments

• A project description of maximum 10 pages. The required project description template will be made available in June 2019. All items must be completed.
• A CV for the project manager (maximum four pages);
• Letters of Intent/Interest from the end-users describing their financial and professional commitments to the project.

Grant applications that do not satisfy the above requirements will be rejected.

Optional attachments

• A proposal for up to three referees who are presumed to be impartial and qualified to review the grant proposal.

Links to websites and documents, as well as other attachments than those specified above, will not be included in the application review process. 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.

Grant proposals will be assessed on the basis of four criteria:

The assessment of these four criteria will be consolidated into a single, overall mark that indicates the quality of the project proposal. 

Grant applications will be made available to external referees via a digital portal. These referees will assess Excellence, Impact and Implementation.

In addition, the Research Council administration will assess the grant application’s relevance to the call for proposals. The administration will also conduct a portfolio review and submit the grant applications to the relevant portfolio boards for decisions based on previously established priorities.

Projects recommended for funding will be requested to submit further information about the project itself and the project partners. Various types of support may be announced exclusively for companies that have been awarded funding for a Demonstration Project under this call. Such support may include, for example, courses and additional support for further development of project results.

The final decision regarding funding is expected to be announced on 12 December 2019.