New Research Centres for Environment-friendly Energy (FME Society)

Approved Norwegian research organisations in binding collaboration with partners from other research organisations, the business sector, the public sector and other societal actors, are eligible to apply. 

See the list of approved research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

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

Requirements relating to the project manager 

• The project manager (centre director) must have documented experience from managing large, complex projects. 
• The project manager must be employed by the Project Owner or by one of the research partners. 
• The application must specify the availability and the time planned to be spent on the tasks of the project manager, the work package leaders or any other members of the centre management. 
• The project manager’s and other project management's professional competence and suitability to carry out the project will be assessed by a peer panel. 

Requirements for the centre and partners 

• The research in the centre must be carried out by research organisations in binding collaboration with relevant actors in Norwegian business and industry, the public sector, and other societal actors. 
• The application must be strategically anchored within the host institution and all partners. 
• All partners must actively contribute to the planning, follow-up and dissemination of results from the centre and to ensure that new knowledge is put to use. 
• The centre must have at least three partners who are approved Norwegian research organisations, and preferably more. 
• The centre must have a minimum of three, and preferably more, funding partners which are not research organisations. These are referred to as user partners. 
• The centre must have at least one foreign research partner, and preferably several. 
• The centre may also have foreign user partners. It must be documented how any foreign user partners will contribute to achieving the centre's goals. 
• Centres with many user partners place great demands on the organisation of the centre. If there are many user partners, we encourage applicants to differentiate between companies/enterprises that actively participate in research and companies/enterprises that primarily participate as "listening posts", "problem owners" or similar. The first group may have the status of user partners and be part of the consortium, while the latter group may have a looser connection to the centre, for example in a reference group, and not be part of the consortium itself and the centre budget. 
• The centre must have a board where the chairman of the board and the majority of the members come from the user partners. 

Scope of support 

• You can apply for funding to cover the actual costs necessary to carry out the centre’s activities. 
• The centres can apply for in the range of NOK 60-120 million over an eight year period. 
• 3/8 of the Research Council's funding shall be budgeted over the last three years of the centre period. Based on recommendations from the assessments of the centre, the Research Council may make new conditions in the contract for the centre's activities during the last three years of the project period. 
• To ensure flexibility, it is a requirement that at least 10 per cent of the Research Council's funding is unallocated from year three onwards. For the final three years of the centre’s period of operation, up to 25 per cent of our funding may be unallocated. 
• Funding from user partners must constitute at least 15 per cent of the Research Council's funding. Both cash financing and funding in the form of the user partners' own work input in the centre (so-called in-kind) must 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 Project Owner and other research partners may also contribute their own funding, but this is not a requirement. It is not possible to use funding from other projects funded by 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 emphasised in the application assessment. 
• User funding included in the centre cannot be used at a later stage as business funding for other Research Council funded projects. This also applies to user funding that is added during the centre period. 
• Some of the funding from the Research Council can be used for administrative work to establish the consortium starting from 1 August 2027. The start-up date of the actual research activity in the centres will be 1 January 2028. 
• Stays abroad for research fellows at the centre and stays for guest researchers in Norway must be covered within the framework of the project. 

You can find detailed and important information on the Research Council's website about what to enter in the project budget.  

Prerequisites for the award of funding 

The centres must start between 1 August 2027 and 1 January 2028. The latest permitted project completion date is 31 December 2035. 

We do not award funding that constitutes state aid under this call. We assume that the research is carried out in 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: 

• Support for the research organisations in the centre goes to the organisations' non-economic activity. It therefore does not constitute state aid. The Research Council assumes that the necessary accounting separation is in place. 
• Companies are not eligible to receive funding to cover project costs. Business actors and others who are to be regarded as enterprises in the sense of state aid law will thus not be reimbursed for any of their costs in connection with participation in the centre. 
• Rights to project results shall be regulated so that companies participating in the centre do not receive indirect funding from participating research partners. The regulation of the rights must therefore be in line with the ESA's guidelines on aid for research, development and innovation, point 29. This means that rights to IPR from the project must be allocated to the various partners in a way that fully reflects their work packages, contributions and respective interests. 

The Research Council's prerequisites for the allocation and disbursement of funding for the first year, and any commitments and disbursements for subsequent years, are set out in our general terms and conditions for R&D projects, which you can find in full on the information page What the contract involves.  

Ethics 

The Research Council requires a high standard of research ethics in the projects we fund, and ethics is included in the assessment criterion for Research Quality. In the template for the project description, there is a separate section that deals with this. The description of ethics is first and foremost an assurance to the peers that there is a plan in place to deal with the most important ethical dilemmas in the project. If you need to describe this in more detail, this can be done elsewhere in the project description, for example under method selection, or you can do so in the data management plan(s) (see below). 

The responsibility for ensuring that the research ethics standard is followed lies with the individual researcher and research institution (cf. the Act on the Organisation of Research Ethics Work). The panel's assessment and the Research Council's decision on the award do not entail any approval of research ethics. 

If you are granted the project, the following must be in place before you enter into a contract with us: 

• Grant recipients in research organisations and the public sector (Project Owners and partners) 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.   
• The Project Owner organisation decides which archiving solution(s) will be used for storing research data that emerges from the project. This must be specified in the project's data management plan. 
• 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. 

The application must be based on a mandatory outline submitted within the deadline of 18 March 2026. 

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 filled in the grant 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 we process. 

• The application and all attachments must be written in English. 
• All attachments must be in PDF format. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description of a maximum of 20 pages. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the call. 
• CV for project manager (centre manager). Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• A maximum of 10 CVs for the most important people/work package leaders in the project, of a maximum of 4 pages each, according to the established template that can be found at the end of the call: 
  • Researchers attaching CVs must use the template "Template for CV researchers". 
  • Persons who are going to submit a CV and who do not work at a research organisation can use the template "Template for CV". 
• Letter of intent from the Project Owner's organisation and all registered partners, i.e., both user partners and research partners. Letters of intent must be a maximum of three pages and in English. The declarations must have the following content: 
  • Each 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 justify their interest in participating in the centre. In what way will the centre's activities benefit the partner and create opportunities that would not be there without the centre? 
  • What potential for innovation and sustainable value creation does the partner envisage from the centre’s expected results? 
  • How will the research results be used? 
  • The partner must summarize its contribution to the centre in the form of knowledge, expertise and any funding, facilities and own efforts over the lifetime of the centre. 
  • The partner must account for its own long-term R&D plans and how it fits with what the centre will do (strategic anchoring). 

A letter of intent from the Project Owner must also include a declaration from management stating that the organisation will undertake the obligations entailed in a contract with the Research Council. The declaration must also explain how the centre is included in the Project Owner organisation's academic strategy. 

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

Optional attachment 

• You can suggest up to 5 international peers who are considered qualified to assess the application (in case you want to adjust the input from the outline round). The peers must be impartial and should have broad expertise/approach to the scope of the centre. 

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We will not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested 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 will be assessed in light of the purpose of the call and the following criteria:

Portfolio assessment 

We will look at the overall portfolio within the area when we assess the applications. 

More information to come.