Insight

09/06/2021
SECTOR REPORT

What’s going on around transport sector in Horizon Europe?

European Transport research contributes to finding solutions to the increasing mobility of people, with low-carbon technologies, clean vehicles, smart mobility systems and integrated services for passengers and freight.

The overall budget allocated in Horizon Europe for the transport sector concerning the two years 2021-2022 is EUR 573.00 million.

Thanks to the Wheesbee platform, analyses were carried out on the 711 topics of Horizon Europe Pillar 2 “Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness”, which showed that 54 grants are dedicated to the transport sector, including Automotive, Road Mobility, Rail, and Maritime, with a median value of total indicative budget for the topic of EUR 8.00 million.

The figure 1 shows the annual breakdown of funds, based on the deadline date of the topics.

Figure 1: Overall budget for transport sector referred to Horizon Europe Pillar 2: Breakdown 2021/2022

Figure 1: Overall budget for transport sector referred to Horizon Europe Pillar 2: Breakdown 2021/2022

Figure 2: Overall budget for transport sector referred to Horizon Europe Pillar 2: Breakdown on cluster.

Figure 2: Overall budget for transport sector referred to Horizon Europe Pillar 2: Breakdown on cluster.

Horizon Europe Pillar 2 consists of 6 Clusters. The figure 2 shows the overall budget breakdown on Clusters, the most focused on the transport sector is the Cluster 5, with EUR 544.50 million allocated in the transport sector.

In fact, the Cluster 5 “Climate, Energy and Mobility” aims to fight climate change by better understanding its causes, evolution, risks, impacts and opportunities, and by making the energy and transport sectors more climate and environment-friendly, more efficient and competitive, smarter, safer and more resilient and dedicates 52 out of 198 topics to the transport sector related to (as shown in the figure 3):

  • industrial competitiveness in transport
  • clean, safe and accessible transport and mobility
  • smart mobility
Figure 3: Detail on Cluster 5: Total topic (191) and topic dedicated to transport sector (56)

Figure 3: Detail on Cluster 5: Total topic (198) and topic dedicated to transport sector (52)

Figure 4: Technologies analysis on trasport sector: number of topic where technologies is required

Figure 4: Technologies analysis on trasport sector: number of topic where technologies is required

The other topics are more related to:

  • climate science and solutions
  • energy supply
  • energy systems and grids
  • buildings and industrial facilities in energy transition
  • communities and cities
  • energy storage

An analysis of the technologies required for the implementation of the research and innovation actions (figure 4) shows that it is mainly the technologies inherent in the production process that need to be more developed, followed by ICT, material and nanotech technologies.

As of today, 25 grants are open while the other 29 will be open in the coming months.