Demonstration Project for the Industrial Sector

This call is open to companies that have been issued an enterprise number under the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and carry out economic activity in Norway.

Specific requirements apply for collaboration with other companies/actors in the value chain. These requirements vary somewhat between the thematic areas and are described under the respective areas in the section ‘Relevant thematic areas’.

Sole proprietorships and research organisations are not eligible to serve as a formal applicant.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

• The Project Owner must be a company that carries out activities of an industrial or business nature and has been issued an enterprise number under the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises
• The Project Owner must secure funding for the project (in addition to the Research Council’s funding) and make provisions for utilisation of the project results in the company.

Requirements relating to collaboration and roles in the project

• The Project Owner must carry out the project in collaboration with at least one other company/actor in the value chain. More information about the expectations of such collaborations can be found in the descriptions of each thematic area. The partners must normally contribute financial and/or scientific commitments to the project. A letter of intent/letter of interest describing the partners' contribution to the project must be enclosed with the application. The partners must be listed in the section ‘Project partners’ in the application form. Read more about project partners and R&D providers here.
• The Project Owner can carry out the project in effective collaboration with other companies in Norway. Parts of these companies’ project costs will then be covered by the Research Council’s funding of the project, and the companies will therefore become recipients of state aid.
• Norwegian and foreign expert environments and research organisations may participate in the project as R&D providers with responsibility for performing R&D work on assignment for the business partners. R&D providers may not contribute to project funding and in general have no rights to the project results. They deliver on assignment and should receive the market price for their work. If they are nonetheless to maintain the rights to results, this should be reflected in the assignment’s pricing. These must be listed in the section ‘R&D providers’ in the application form. Read more about project partners and R&D providers here.
• Other international actors may participate in the project, but will not receive Research Council funding.
• The Project Owner and partners to the project may not be in an interdependent relationship with any of the R&D providers in the project, e.g. be part of the same corporation. The ‘arm’s length principle’ must be observed when engaging R&D providers.
• The Project Owner and partners that are interdependent will be considered as one entity and as a single recipient of funding in accordance with the state aid rules.
• The application with relevant partners and R&D providers at the time the application is submitted forms the basis and is a stringent condition for funding. Changes made to the composition of a project before a contract is entered into, if relevant, may result in the Research Council withdrawing its offer of funding.

Typical characteristics of a funded project

• A demonstration project builds on a specific innovation stemming from the companies participating in the project. The innovation may be a new product, service or production process, or a new means of delivering products and services. It can also be in the form of significant improvements to or new characteristics of existing products, services or processes.
• R&D activities must comply with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation for state aid and primarily concern experimental development as this concept is defined in the state aid rules. The companies depend on R&D activities in the form of demonstration and verification of the technology/innovation before market introduction and further commercialisation.
• The scope and risk profile of the project is such that the companies would not be able to carry out the project without public funding. The funding from the Research Council should provide critical risk relief for implementation of the activities. The project funding should be instrumental in obtaining private investments in the company that can be used to realise the innovation.
• The project must have clear objectives and a concrete plan for implementation of activities and for utilising the results. The intended users in the project in question must be described in the grant application. You must also describe the short and long-term impact.
• Demonstration and qualification activities are to be carried out under realistic conditions. A clear plan for this must be included in the project description.

Parts of the companies’ costs pertaining to R&D activities under the project qualify for funding. This applies to costs associated with R&D activities carried out by the project partners and to costs incurred in connection with purchase of services from subcontractors or R&D providers. The costs incurred by business partners must be entered in the budget tables on a par with the Project Owner’s costs.

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 on the Research Council’s website.

The Research Council does not provide funding for operational business activities including activities associated with the commercial exploitation of the R&D results, such as protection of intellectual property rights, market surveys and marketing. Nor is funding provided for costs that will not be recorded in the Project Owner or partners’ official accounts, such as own unpaid work effort. Nor are commercial rates for infrastructure owned by a partner or equipment/datasets donated to the project free of charge approved project costs. Such costs are therefore not to be included in the application’s budget tables.

Scope of funding

Projects should have a project period of between 1 and 3 years. The minimum amount available from the Research Council is NOK 1 million, and the maximum amount is NOK 16 million.

The project activities are defined under the category ‘Experimental development’. Effective collaboration does not qualify for additional funding. The aid intensity may vary from 25 per cent to maximum 45 per cent depending on the size of the company as defined in the state aid rules. For applications awarded funding, the final grant amount will be determined in conjunction with contract negotiations.

Conditions for funding

This call for proposals constitutes a funding scheme that is notified to the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA). 

Funding awarded under this scheme is granted in accordance with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation for state aid (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014 of 17 June 2014). The general terms and conditions in Chapter I of the Regulation must also be satisfied. A consolidated version of the General Block Exemption Regulation for state aid with amendments from July 2020 is found here. 

This funding scheme must be practised in compliance with the EEA state aid rules. This means that conditions and concepts are interpreted in keeping with corresponding conditions and concepts in the state aid rules. In the event of conflict between the text of the call and the state aid rules, the latter will have precedence. The text of the call may be adjusted for this same reason.

State aid may not be given to an undertaking that is subject to an outstanding recovery order following a formal decision by the EFTA Surveillance Authority or the European Commission stating that state aid received is illegal and incompatible with the internal market. Nor can the Research Council award state aid to an enterprise that is defined as an undertaking in difficulty under the state aid rules, unless the undertaking was not in difficulty as of 31 December 2019, but became an undertaking in difficulty in the period 1 January 2020 – 30 June 2021. It may in such case receive funding.

The call for proposals has been approved as an aid scheme by the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) with the reference: GBER 31/2021/R&D&I. 

• If the project application is awarded funding, the Project Owner must revise the project and grant application in accordance with the conditions set out by the ruling body in the Research Council. The revised application must incorporate updated and supplementary information about the project and participating partners.
• The participating companies must also submit a declaration confirming that they are qualified to receive state aid.
• Other public funding allocated 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 listed in a public registry.
• When the Project Owner is informed that the project will be allocated funding, they must inform any partners listed on the stock exchange or that have applied to be admitted to trading to give them an opportunity to assess whether the allocation of funding will be considered sensitive inside information.
• For awarded projects, the project must commence no later than six months after the awarded grant was announced. Projects approved for funding that have not started within this date may lose their grant.
• Projects awarded funding under this call are among other things required to submit accounting reports annually documenting incurred project costs and their financing.

You can read more about our requirements relating to allocation in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects.

Applications must be created and submitted via My RCN Web. The application and all attachments must be written in Norwegian or English. This call has an open-ended deadline. A unique grant application may only be submitted once (whereas calls with a fixed deadline may be submitted and resubmitted multiple times up to the submission deadline).

• All attachments to the online grant application form must be uploaded in PDF format. The templates for attachments can be found at the end of the call for proposals.
• The project description must be written using the designated template, and all sections must be completed.
• If the applicant has submitted the same or similar grant proposals to other Research Council calls for proposals, this must be stated in the grant application.
• At least one partner must be entered on the application form as described under ‘Requirements relating to collaboration and roles in the project’ and in the descriptions of the thematic areas above.

Mandatory attachments

• Project description of up to 10 pages in length using the designated template for demonstration projects. Please note that there is new template for 2021.
• Information about partners for the company submitting the grant application (Project Owner) and each of the industry partners using the designated template. Please note that there is new template for 2021.
• The CV of the project manager using the designated template. Please note that there is new template for 2021.
• A letter of intent/letter of interest from partner(s) explaining why the project is important, and a description of its financial and/or scientific commitments to the project.

All requirements set out in the call must be met. Applications that do not meet the formal requirements, or requirements relating to the Project Owner, collaboration and roles in the project, will not be considered.

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 uploaded attachments, so please ensure that you upload the correct file for the selected type of attachment.

Grant applications will be assessed on the basis of the following criteria:

The application and mandatory attachments will be made available in a digital portal for referees who will perform an assessment of the criteria ‘Excellence’, Impact’ and ‘Implementation’. Each application will be assessed by a referee panel comprising at least three experts. The referee panel will submit a consensus-based assessment for each of the three criteria.

After the panel has completed its assessment, the Research Council will conduct an assessment of the criterion ‘Relevance to the call for proposals’. The result of the assessment of the four criteria given above are summarised as an ‘overall mark’, which represents the overall assessment of the application’s quality, and this will be of decisive importance to whether the project is eligible for funding.

The Research Council administration will then present the projects to the relevant Research Council portfolio boards for the final funding decision. The portfolio boards emphasise achieving a balanced portfolio of projects within their area of responsibility, including in relation to ongoing projects and applications from other calls. These assessments will be based on the budgetary framework, the text of the call for proposals and documents referred to in the description of the respective thematic areas.

The portfolio board will also consider the Research Council’s general policy for allocation of funding, which takes account of:

• research ethics
• prioritisation of projects led by women project managers, assuming all other quality-related factors are essentially equal

Expected funding decision

Applications will be processed in groups. The expected funding decision dates are presented in the table below. The Research Council will have two periods in 2021 during which applications will be received and processed. It is possible that certain topics will allocate all available funding in period 1. The Research Council will in such case post a notification of this at the top of the call for proposals. Applications received for topics that do not have available funding will be rejected. 

Please note that rejected applications that are resubmitted without significant changes to the project and grant application will be considered on the basis of the original assessment by the portfolio board. If a previously unsuccessful grant application is resubmitted, but with significant changes to the project and the grant application itself, this application may be assessed again and by a panel comprised wholly or in part by the same referees who assessed the previous version of the application. Applicants who are re-submitting a previously unsuccessful grant application must provide an account of the relevant changes and their significance to the project in Part 4, item 14 of the project description.