Centre for Environment-friendly Energy Research on Wind Power (FME)

Approved Norwegian research organisations may apply in cooperation with companies. See here for the list of approved Norwegian research organisations.

Private enterprises and, if relevant, public sector actors must participate as user partners. Other research organisations may participate as research partners.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner
The organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have authorised the project manager to submit the grant application. The application must have the strategic support of the Project Owner.

Requirements relating to the project manager
A referee panel will assess the project manager’s professional expertise and suitability to carry out the project. Experience of managing large, complex projects must be documented.

Requirements relating to partners

• The centre will be operated by one or more research organisation in effective collaboration with relevant Norwegian industry partners and potentially also partners from other sectors.
• The application must have the strategic support of all the partners.
• All partners must actively contribute to planning, following up and disseminating the results generated by the centre and ensure that the new knowledge is taken into use.
• The centre must have three or more partners that are not research organisations and that provide funding to the project (user partners). The user partners’ funding must make up at least 50 per cent of the Research Council’s funding, and both cash contributions and in-kind contributions (i.e. work contributions or other services) can be included.
• The board of the centre must have a majority of user partners.
• The centre may have foreign partners. It must be documented how these will contribute to reaching the centre’s goals.

Scope of funding

• You can apply for a maximum of NOK 120 million distributed over an eight-year period. The funding for the last three years will be decided on the basis of the outcome of a mid-term evaluation of the centre.
• The user partners’ contribution must amount to at least 50 per cent of the Research Council’s funding. Both cash contributions and contributions in-kind are accepted.
• The host institution and other research organisations’ funding contribution must be such that the Research Council’s overall contribution does not exceed around half of the centre’s budget.
• State aid will not be granted through the centre schemes.
• You can apply for funding to cover the actual costs necessary to carry out the project. Read more about what to enter in the project budget here.
• Stays abroad for doctoral and post-doctoral fellows must be covered within the framework of the project. FMEs will therefore not be covered by the Research Council’s call for Funding for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellows

Conditions for funding
The Research Council will not award support that constitutes state aid under this call. This means that the Research Council funding is only to go to the non-economic activity of the research organisations in the form of independent research. The Research Council requires a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non-economic activities. Companies will not be eligible to receive support to cover projects costs and may not receive indirect support by being given rights to project results under favourable terms.

The project is to be implemented by means of effective collaboration as defined in the state aid rules. Effective collaboration is defined as follows:

‘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.’

Please remember to carefully read the document ‘Centres for Environment-friendly Energy Research (FME) – Requirements and guidelines August 2020’. You will find the link under the section ‘About the call for proposals’ above.

The Project Owner (research organisation) 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 grant application form must be created and submitted via ‘My RCN Web’. 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.

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

Mandatory attachments

• Project description of up to 20 pages in length, using a designated template which is available for download at the end of the call.
• CV of the project manager (centre director) and other key personnel/work package managers in the project of up to four pages each using the designated template at the end of the call. A maximum of eight CVs can be attached.
• Letter of intent from the host institution.
• Letter of intent from all registered partners.

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.

Attachments other than those specified above, as well as any links to websites in the grant application, 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.

In the selection process, emphasis will be placed on the application’s relevance to the thematic guidelines set out in the call. The potential for innovation and sustainable business development is a key consideration, and the scientific quality of the research must be at a high international level.

The Research Council uses the three main criteria Excellence, Impact and Implementation. Furthermore, the Research Council will assess the applications’ relevance in relation to the requirements and guidelines set out in the call, including the centre’s national contribution and profile, its place in the host institution’s research strategies and how the centre builds on or complements other established centres or other major initiatives.

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.

After receiving the applications, the Research Council will carry out a preliminary administrative review to check that all formal requirements have been satisfied. Applications that do not meet the formal requirements will be rejected.

Approved applications will be assessed by a referee panel comprising impartial scientific experts in the relevant thematic area and experts well acquainted with the field of wind power. For each individual application, the Research Council will check that the referee panel is impartial and has sufficient expertise to assess the research topic in question. Assessments can also be obtained from external referees in order to assist the panel in reaching a consensus-based assessment. 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 average of the four criteria without weighting. 

The portfolio board for energy, transport and low emissions will make the final decision on allocation.

The funding decision is expected to be announced in December 2020.