Green Platform Initiative 2025

The company or research institute that has the role of Project Owner is the one that can apply (see "Requirements relating to the Project Owner" below). For the purposes of this call, only companies and research institutes may be Project Owners.

• Companies that apply must be registered in the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and have economic activity in Norway. Sole proprietorships and clusters cannot be Project Owners.
• Research institutes are limited to "Organisations covered by the Government's Strategy for Comprehensive Institute Policy, including organisations covered by the Guidelines for State Basic Funding." You can find an overview of which research institutes this applies to on this website.  

About the Project Owner

Both companies and research institutes can take on the role of Project Owner organisation. One organisation is the Project Owner and submits the application on behalf of a consortium.

At the time of application submission, the Project Owner is the organisation that represents the consortium and that approves the submission of the application.

If the application is awarded funding, the Project Owner will coordinate the project and enter into a contract with the Research Council. However, each partner will be responsible for their duties and contributions to the project. The division of tasks, working methods, rights and obligations between the Project Owner and partners must be regulated in the consortium agreement.

About the project manager

The project manager will be the one who follows up and has contact with the funding agencies on behalf of the consortium. The consortium chooses the project manager they consider most suitable. The project manager must be employed by the Project Owner or one of the partners.

There are no formal requirements for the project manager's qualifications, but being able to demonstrate experience in leading large and demanding R&D projects is a clear advantage. The project manager's competence and suitability to carry out the project will be assessed by a panel.

About partners

The project is to be carried out by a consortium, which is an association of at least three Norwegian independent partners, of which at least two must be companies.

Other partners may be Norwegian research institutes, universities, university colleges, public agencies and other organisations registered in the Brønnøysund Register Centre. Catapults can also be partners (read more about the catapult scheme here, in Norwegian only).   

Foreign companies and foreign research organisations can also participate as partners. The foreign research organisations can receive funding in the same way as Norwegian research institutes. Other foreign organisations, including companies, cannot receive funding from the Green Platform initiative.

We encourage you to only include partners who have a clear and dedicated role, a real contribution to the project implementation, and who have clear ambitions to exploit and contribute to the commercialisation and dissemination of the results.

The allocation of funding is based on the composition of partners that you have included in the application. If you change the project composition or work packages after the contract has been signed, this must be approved by the funding agencies that fund the project. Changes that have not been approved may lead to the withdrawal of the funding commitment. Proposed changes may also entail a need to adjust the funding commitment.  

You can apply for funding to cover the actual costs necessary to carry out the project. The Project Owner must obtain information on costs from the partners in the project. These costs must be entered in the cost plan under the cost type to which they belong.

You can apply for funding for:

• payroll and indirect expenses
• equipment (rent/depreciation instruments and equipment), this also includes existing equipment made available by catapults
• other operating expenses (including the use of subcontractors)

Since the project partners will work in effective collaboration, all partners must enter their costs under personnel and indirect expenses, equipment or other operating expenses. All partners must also have the role "Both research activity and financing" in the application. The item "Procurement of R&D services" in the application form is not to be used.

You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget  on the website.  

The use of subcontractors in connection with R&D activities is reserved for deliveries of services, equipment and other tasks of limited scope and which the partners cannot carry out without assistance. Subcontractors cannot have any formal role in the management of the project or become the owner of the project results. They cannot enter as partners in the consortium.

Scope of support

For the purposes of this call, funding is only available to cover costs that are authorised by Article 25 of the GBER and that fall within the categories of industrial research and experimental development.

The state aid rules set some maximum aid rates (in percentages) depending on the size of the company and the type of activity to be carried out, see the table below:  

Activity	Large company	Medium-sized company	Small company	GBER
Industrial research	50 %	60 %	70 %	Article 25
Experimental development	25 %	35 %	45 %	Article 25
Maximum share of support per partner*	60 %	60 %	60 %

No company can have more than 60% of its eligible costs covered, and this includes any collaboration bonus (see below). The exception are catapults that can have up to 70% of their eligible costs covered, including collaboration bonuses.

If the collaboration in the project meets at least one of the conditions below, the company partners in the project may receive up to 15% collaboration bonus to cover the costs of the R&D project, if there is room within the maximum aid limit of 60%:

• effective collaboration between companies where at least one is an SME (see definition of company sizes here), and no company alone accounts for more than 70 per cent of the eligible costs, or
• effective collaboration between a company and one or more organisations for research and knowledge dissemination, where the latter alone bear at least 10 per cent of the eligible costs and have the right to publish their own research results

All other partners, regardless of their form of organisation (public organisations, clusters, associations, foundations and special interest organisations), can apply for up to 50% support. If a public organisation is to be regarded as an undertaking for the purposes of state aid, the same rules apply to aid as for undertakings. The support will go to R&D activities and activities that ensure that knowledge, technology and solutions from the project can be more easily adapted, implemented and used in the organisation and in other activities.

Budgeting and recording of costs

Each partner must describe its activities, costs and need for public support in connection with the implementation. Guidelines for calculating hourly rates for recording personnel costs and indirect costs for companies, the public sector and other applicants can be found here.

The university and university college sector must use the total cost model (TDI model) when budgeting costs, while the institute sector must use the rates they have reported to the Research Council.

The Green Platform initiative has set some restrictions on the proportion of the project's total costs that can accrue to a single partner and the R&D partners as a whole:

• One partner can account for a maximum of 40% of the total project costs.
• R&D partners can collectively account for a maximum of 50% of the total project costs.

You must enter project costs in the application form and in a separate budget template for the Green Platform initiative (Budget template - Green Platform 2025).

Project costs, when using a catapult centre, must be entered in the application form in the same way as other project costs, but preferably as a separate work package or subproject where it is natural. In addition, the catapults must submit their budget in their own budget template. You can find this at the bottom of the call (Budget template – Norwegian Catapult 2025).

Conditions for funding

Projects must start between 1 January 2026 and 1 March 2026 with the latest permitted project completion date of 31 December 2028.

The support for research institutes must go to their non-economic activity in the form of independent research carried out in effective collaboration with others. It therefore does not constitute state aid. The Research Council assumes that the necessary accounting separation is in place.

Funding from the Research Council of Norway, Innovation Norway and Siva is awarded to companies and catapults in accordance with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014). In addition, the general conditions in Chapter I of the Regulation must be met. The scheme must be practised in accordance with the EEA Agreement's state aid rules. In this context, the terms and concepts must be interpreted in accordance with the corresponding terms and concepts in the aid rules.

The support from the various funding agencies has been notified as an aid scheme to the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA). The Research Council's funding is referenced GBER xx/2025/RDI (the correct reference will be provided later).

Undertakings that have not complied with the requirements for repayment pursuant to a previous decision by ESA/the European Commission declaring the aid unlawful and incompatible with the internal market are not eligible for aid, nor may aid be granted to undertakings in difficulty within the meaning of EEA law.

You must provide us with up-to-date and supplementary information about the project and the partners. The companies participating in the project must also submit a "Template Information about applicant and partner companies" confirming that they are eligible to receive state aid. You can find the template at the end of the call.

The Project Owner or partners must be independent of any subcontractors in the project, i.e. they must operate at arm's length in accordance with the state aid rules.

If one of the companies in the consortium receives a total state aid from the Research Council of Norway, Innovation Norway or Siva that corresponds to EUR 100,000, we will make this known in the Register of State Aid in Brønnøysund. See Regulation on the registration of state aid (in Norwegian only).

If you are awarded funding for the project, you must notify any partners who are listed on the stock exchange or who have applied to be admitted to trading on the Oslo stock exchange as soon as possible, so that they can assess whether or not the allocation of project funds represents stock exchange-sensitive information.

Ethics

The Research Council requires a high standard of research ethics in the projects we fund. The responsibility for compliance with the research ethics standard lies with the individual researcher and research institution (cf.  The Act on the Organisation of Research Ethics).  The panel's assessment and the Research Council's decision on funding do not entail any research ethics approval.

If the project receives funding, the following must be in place when you revise the application:

• The project manager and the Project Owner must have assessed and handled the consideration of research security in the project. Research security refers to risks associated with unwanted transfer of knowledge and technology, impact on research and innovation, or breaches of research ethics/integrity where knowledge and technology are used to undermine key societal values.
• Research organisations and the public sector (Project Owners and partners) that receive funding must have action plans for gender equality (GEPs) available on their websites. The requirement does not apply to the private sector, interest groups or the voluntary sector.
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access for scientific articles, see Plan S - open access to publications.   
• For all projects that handle data, the Project Owner must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised application, where you will find more information about the requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us.

Funding from the Research Council is paid in arrears on the basis of an EHF invoice sent from the Project Owner to the Research Council. You will only be reimbursed for actual costs that have been entered in the project partners' accounts. All reporting must be done electronically, see Non-automatic payment with EHF invoice.

The funds that come from Innovation Norway are made as partial payments of funding for innovation projects: Up to 30 per cent of the funding can be paid in advance. When you can document that at least 50 per cent of the total project costs have been incurred, an additional up to 50 per cent of the funding may be disbursed. Of the total amount of funding, a minimum of 20 per cent must be withheld until the project has been completed and the final report with auditor-approved project accounts is available.

The support that comes from Siva is paid out up to 90 percent in advance each year. Of the total funds, a minimum of 10 per cent must be withheld until the project has been completed and the final report and auditor-approved accounts are available.

The application must be based on at least one project outline submitted by the deadline of Wednesday 5 March.

The application must be created and submitted via My RCN Web. The application and all attachments must be written in Norwegian or English. This call has a deadline of Wednesday 4 June at 13:00. This means that you can revise and submit the application several times until the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the mandatory attachments. When the application deadline expires, it is the version of the application that was submitted most recently that will be processed.

• The application and all attachments must be written in Norwegian or English.
• All attachments must be in PDF format.
• The requirements relating to the Project Owner's organisation must be met.
• Requirements for the partners must be met.

The project must start between 1 January 2026 and 1 March 2026. Projects that have received a decision on allocation, but do not start during this period, may lose their allocation.

Mandatory attachments

• Project description of a maximum of 15 pages. Use the template that you can download at the bottom of the page.
• CV for the project manager and for the most key project participants. A maximum of five CVs can be submitted per application, each of a maximum of four pages. We recommend that you use the CV templates at the bottom of the call. Key project participants who are researchers can use the CV template called "Template for CV researchers". Other key project participants can use the CV template called "Template for CV".
• Partner details for all companies in the consortium. Use the template that you can download at the bottom of the page.
• Letter of intent from all registered partners in the project, which must include a description of each partner's expectations, role, motivation and efforts. There is no template here.
• Own project budget. Use the template that you can download at the bottom of the page.
• A separate, more specified catapult budget when applying for support for a catapult. Use the template that you can download at the bottom of the page.

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have asked applicants for additional documentation.

We will not consider documents and websites linked to in the application, or attachments other than those specified above. Be careful to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on what kind of templates it is possible to upload in the application form.

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

We assess the applications according to the criteria below.

The criteria are assessed by a panel of referees. Each criterion is given a grade from 1-7 (with 7 being the highest). The average of these marks will be the overall mark for the application.  

The degree of innovation is an expression of how novel and groundbreaking the project is compared to what is available in the market both nationally and internationally. Innovation is understood as value-creation/ novelty in the market.

To what extent
• the project represents something new, innovative and ambitious that challenges established approaches and creates added value in the industry/area in general and for the partners in the project in particular
• the project addresses known needs or new market opportunities for partners in the project

Excellence is an expression of the scope and quality of the project's R&D activities.

To what extent
• the project is based on relevant and up-to-date knowledge
• the status of the research represents state-of-the-art
• the R&D activities are relevant and essential to achieve the goals of project
• the R&D activities are of high quality and are clearly described

The potential for value creation is an expression of the expected financial benefits for the partners in the project and the industry/area in general following implementation and commercialisation. We consider the commercial potential towards 2030 against the overall costs of the project. In the assessment, we assume that the realisation will be successful and aligned with the stated ambitions of the project.

The extent to which the results of the project
• generate new, green turnover
• strengthen competitiveness in new or established markets
• provide other business gains (e.g. reduced costs, better resource utilisation, new business models, digitalisation and enabling technologies)

The project results will have significant positive outcomes and impacts on climate and the environment in a 2030 perspective and move us closer to a low-emission society in 2050.

To what extent
• the project contributes significantly to solving at least one of the six environmental objectives of the EU taxonomy without significant negative impact on the other five environmental goals ("Do No Significant Harm")
• the application substantiates and quantifies the climate and environmental benefits
• the project clarifies benefits using suitable methods/tools such as Life Cycle Analysis

Socio-economic value is an expression of the significance the project will have for society in general beyond the value creation within the companies in the project.

The extent to which the project
• contribute to the development of new or secure established jobs in relevant industries/sectors
• boost export revenues from new green markets
• include plans for communication and dissemination of knowledge and results
• contribute to the sustainable transformation of the public sector and civil society
• build knowledge and research capacity benefiting green transformations in society
• develop and increase utilisation of national testing and verification infrastructure for new green technologies or solutions

The ability to implement the project covers the partners' overall ability to carry out the project in line with stated objectives and ambitions, as well as the quality of the project organisation presented in the grant application.

To what extent
• the project plan has specific and well-developed goals, work packages, milestones, and a robust set of risk assessments
• there is a balanced and appropriate allocation of budget, tasks, roles, risks, and results between the partners
• the budget and financing plan are realistic and feasible, where the partners possess sufficient financial implementation capacity
• the project is strategically endorsed by the Project Owner and other partners
• the project manager has the appropriate skills and experience to lead a large R&D project
• the project has access to expertise and capacity needed to carry out the project
• there are plans for market-related activities such as scaling and commercialisation during and after the project period to ensure realisation of benefits and project objectives

After the application deadline, the Research Council, Innovation Norway and Siva will first check that the applications meet the formal requirements. Applications that do not satisfy these will be rejected.

Applications that meet the formal requirements will be considered by an external panel consisting of referees with relevant expertise. The panel awards a mark for each of the six assessment criteria. The six marks form the basis for the overall mark, which is calculated based on the average of the marks for the six assessment criteria.

Based on the overall mark and an initial portfolio assessment, up to 25 applications with an overall mark equal to or higher than 5 will be invited for an interview where the panel and advisers from the funding agencies will participate. The purpose of the interviews is to give the panel the opportunity to ask questions and clarify ambiguities in the application. One result of the interview may be that one or more marks are adjusted before the overall mark is finally set. Applications that are not invited for an interview will not be eligible for funding.

The decision to award funding will be made based on the budget framework of the funding agencies, in addition to each application's overall mark, the portfolio assessment and any other factors (see below). The overall mark must be equal to or higher than 5 for an application to be considered eligible for support.

The portfolio assessment is intended to ensure that the applications contribute to the objective of a balanced portfolio. The portfolio assessment considers and emphasises the following criteria:

• The extent to which the projects contribute to a wide range of sectors, industries, technologies and topics.
• The extent to which the projects contribute to the utilisation and development of national infrastructures, knowledge and competence environments.
• The extent to which the projects contribute to geographical spread.

Other priorities we will focus on for applications that are otherwise similar:

• most sustainable in terms of effects on the climate, the environment and society
• most market proximity and connection
• good gender balance regarding the project manager

The current budget constitutes an overall framework for the funding. The individual budgets of Innovation Norway, Siva and the Research Council may therefore influence the final decision.

Once the board committee has made a final decision, the funding agencies will publish which projects will receive funding. The funding agencies would like to point out that one project may be funded by several funding agency actors.

Applications that do not receive funding will be rejected. 

We do not make any decisions regarding funding during the assessment process. Applicants may be contacted during the assessment process in connection with an interview or other clarifications. All application documents will be shared between the Research Council, Siva and Innovation Norway. By submitting an application, you agree to this.

We expect to publish which applications will be awarded funding in December 2025.