The urgency of comprehensive and effective policy responses to climate change is increasing as its impacts become more pronounced. Europe is warming twice as fast as the global average, leading to serious impacts such as extreme weather and threats to ecosystems, food security and citizens' health. In response to these challenges, the European Union has set itself the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 through initiatives such as The European Green Deal. Research and innovation (R&I) are key to achieving ambitious climate goals and supporting the transition to sustainability. Horizon Europe, the EU framework programme for R&I, places environmental issues at the heart of its work and is expected to allocate more than €100 billion between 2021 and 2027. €32 billion for climate action and more than €3.7 billion for clean air projects.

This one report represents first attempt to quantify the contribution of Horizon Europe to reducing environmental impacts through energy or resource savings. The study uses a pilot methodology based on life cycle assessment (LCA). LCA is a key tool in EU policies, allowing for a comprehensive consideration of impacts across the entire value chain – from raw material extraction to the end of product life – ensuring comprehensiveness, revealing trade-offs and avoiding burden transfer between life cycle stages or impact categories. The analysis takes into account full list of 16 environmental impact categories the Environmental Footprint (EF) method recommended by the European Commission.

Information on project results was obtained through a survey addressed to project coordinators. Out of a total of 2970 projects contacted, 1066 responded, of which 695 (23.4 %) declared energy and/or material savings. However, only 89 projects (3 %) provided quantitative data on savings, of which 34 related to energy savings, 23 to material savings and 32 to both. Based on these data, net environmental benefits per euro of funding for each project were calculated.

Key findings

The analysis estimates that Horizon Europe could potentially achieve greenhouse gas savings of 24 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (Mt CO2eq) over the life cycle of current projects. For a better idea, this estimate almost corresponds to the impact of all domestic flights taken by EU citizens in all Member States of the European Union in 2023 (22.8 Mt CO2eq).

Limitations and underestimation

However, it is important to note that this number is likely underestimates the real savings potentialThe reasons for the underestimation are as follows:

• Savings are only taken into account during the project grant period and do not include additional savingswhich could be realised if the technologies were scaled up at EU level.
• The sample includes only a relatively small part of all Horizon Europe projects (only 89 projects provided quantitative data out of almost 3000 contacted). This introduces considerable uncertainty into the results.
• The timing of the analysis meant that many projects were still in their early stages, and few had reached the demonstration phase, making it difficult to provide estimates of broader impact.

Recommendations for future evaluation

The report provides practical suggestions on how to better integrate this type of assessment into future monitoring and evaluation exercises. It is recommended systematic data collection on energy and resource savings at project level. Grant applications could be adapted to include estimates of material and energy savings achieved during the grant period, as well as potential savings at EU level in case of project success and market deployment. This integrated approach would allow a robust quantitative assessment of the environmental benefits of the program and assessing the success of investments in research and innovation in achieving climate goals and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Although current estimates are preliminary and limited by sample size, this pioneering study represents an important first step to quantify the environmental impact of Horizon Europe and provides a reliable framework for evaluation, which can be integrated into future monitoring and evaluation exercises. JRi