About the portfolio

At the EIC CO₂ and Nitrogen portfolio we aim at developing novel technologies to capture and convert carbon dioxide and nitrogen into useful products.

Our motivation

Anthropogenic activities have strongly increased the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere and highly distorted the global N-compound cycle in the last century. This affects climate change, eutrophication, and the whole function of ecosystems. In this context, CO₂ and N-compound cycles belong to the approach of ‘make, use and dispose’ and their management includes capture, storage, conversion to added value products and recycling. The implementation of sustainable CO₂ and N-compound cycles is a key pillar to the European Green Deal goals.

In particular, the achievement of the EU targets in terms of net-zero CO₂ emissions, and N-compound management by 2050, requires the availability of a range of breakthrough technologies not yet available on the market (IEA net-zero by 2050 roadmap).

Our ambitious proposal aims to investigate the viability of a technology able to tackle these challenges at once.

This Pathfinder Challenge portfolio is formed by 8 selected projects, all working together to capture and convert CO₂ and Nitrogen into useful products.

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Key objectives

Strategic Positioning

The Portfolio aims to strategically position Europe at the forefront of sustainable technologies for CO2 and N-compounds management and valorisation.

European Green Deal Alignment

The overarching goal is to contribute to identifying and accelerating the development of promising technologies, aligning with the European Green Deal targets to combat climate change, global warming, and water and soil pollution.

Collaboration and Networking

Portfolio activities stimulate collaboration among projects and foster networking within the innovation ecosystem, enhancing the EU's technological autonomy in this critical field.

Dissemination

To disseminate knowledge on the advancement of the most promising technologies for managing and valorising CO₂ and N-compounds. These address challenges related to climate change, global warming, and water/soil pollution, aligning with the targets of the European Green Deal.

Three main activity areas

Technology

Leveraging synergies between projects to accelerate technological progress through the sharing of knowledge and laboratory equipment.

Regulatory

Grouping projects streamlines communication, ensuring visibility before regulatory and policy bodies. The Portfolio's creation is a strategic move toward achieving critical mass for policy changes and enabling technology development.

Innovation Journey

Projects collaborate to enhance exploitation strategies and bring innovations to the market, addressing the practical aspects of making a business out of their technological advancements.

Click here to discover more information about the Portfolio projects in the “Two-slides presentation”

The EIC CO₂ and N Portfolio serves as a cohesive platform, combining resources and expertise to drive advancements in sustainable technologies, tackle global environmental challenges, and contribute to the EU’s leadership in the field.

Our portfolio takes an ecosystemic approach to address and overcome a complex challenge. Each project covers a different part of the challenge while other parts are covered by more than one project. The importance of the portfolio actors work is that this ambition is enabled by the EIC funding the whole innovation journey of the Deep Tech. This funding combined with portfolio hands-on approach enables scientific innovators to bring their deep tech from lab to fab. Scientific innovators will not work in silos to achieve outcomes that are more than the sum of the single parts. Link this to the ecosystem approach taken where different people and different know-hows are needed to overcome the complex challenge and achieve the big vision.

This challenge has a variety of different complementary approaches that can only be activated by the portfolio challenges strategy, which has an ambitiously interdisciplinary and ecosystemic element.

Different know-hows and different technology are encouraged and stimulated by EIC to work together to find the synergies in their approach to achieve the wide angle impacts of the challenge.

Officially this is a new innovation strategy – where the portfolio approach is stimulating the meeting, spillover and exchange of ideas so increasing the success rate of the innovation journey.