LEAP SE COFUND Call 2025 : « Europe-Africa Research and Innovation call on Sustainable Energy »
Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS)
Scope and topics:
The scope of the Cofund Call is based on the ecosystem analysis highlighting that Sustainable Energy are of vital importance in tackling the global challenge posed by climate change and in providing reliable energy access to millions of people worldwide.
The thematic of the Cofund Call are relying on the thematic priorities identified in the framework of PRE-LEAP-RE and updated because new technological development and societal issues were raised in the last 4 years, among them:
- The Green hydrogen production, storage, transport and utilisation as an energy vector aiming at decarbonisation of energy systems in different sectors and applications (electricity storage, industry, mobility, housing…).
- Digital innovations could deeply enhance energy systems including off-grid systems where supply and demand should be balanced for smart grids stability and performance.
- Clean Mobility systems for persons and good transportation. Beyond the mass development of new clean transport vehicles which is outside the scope of this programme, the use of renewable energy to charge electrical vehicles batteries and new mobility services such as car sharing could be developed to decarbonise the mobility in rural as well as in urban areas. These systems encompass new business models such as car sharing and mobility as a service.
- The Energy - Water - Agriculture Nexus is a growing concern which should be addressed by research and innovation projects.
- COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that local off-grid renewable energy systems brought resilience facing the pandemic and the shortage of value chains of conventional energy.
This leads to the objectives of the 7 Multiannual Road Maps (MAR) supported by the LEAP-SE Joint Cofund Call 2025 listed below:
# 1: Assessment of Renewable Energy Sources and integration of RES in sustainable energy scenarios;
# 2: End-of-life and second‐life management and environmental impact of RE components;
# 3: Smart stand‐alone systems;
# 4: Smart grid (different scales) for off grid application;
# 5: Processes and appliances for productive uses (agriculture, mobility and industry) (not supported by F.R.S. - FNRS);
# 6: Innovative solutions for priority domestic uses (clean cooking and cold chain) (not supported by F.R.S. - FNRS);
# 7: Production and utilisation of Green Hydrogen
Financement
Each partner is funded separately by the national/regional funding organisation they are applying to. They must fulfil the conditions of their funding organisation.
The maximum amount of requested funding per project is 300.000 EUR for a total period of thee years. If the project involves the recruitment of a PhD student, the project duration of the F.R.S.-FNRS sub-project could be up to four years.
Eligible costs items
Personnel costs: 80,000€ EUR per year on average for the duration of the project. The usual duration of ERA-NET research programmes is three years. However, when the project involves a PhD student, the principal investigator can apply for an additional one year funding in order to complete the four years PhD programme. Since this programme is co-funded by the European Commission, this final year should not be included in the budget submitted to this call.
Equipment: can be eligible up to 20% of the total budget of the project
Running costs: travel expenses; organisation of small scientific events in Belgium; consumables and the following support costs: consumables Publication Designing (conception d’ouvrage) Dictionary Production (réalisation de dictionnaire) Purchase of Books Encoding Software Access Rights Congress Registration Fees Purchase of Computer Scanning Travel costs Visa costs Open Access publication of an article up until 500 euros (see F.R.S-FNRS Open Access policy).
“Overhead” is not an eligible cost for FNRS. If the project is selected for funding, these costs will be subject to a separate agreement between the institution of the beneficiary and the F.R.S.-FNRS.
Pour postuler
Submission of joint transnational proposals:
There will be a two-stage submission procedure: pre-proposals and full-proposals. All lawful steps will be taken to ensure confidentiality of information and documents obtained during the submission, evaluation and selection procedures of the Cofund Call.
The coordinator(Partner 1), who will represent the consortium, will need to register on the LEAP-SE Electronic Submission Platform provided by the French National Research Agency (ANR) (coordinator registration link) before submitting a proposal.
A joint transnational pre-proposal shall be prepared in English by the consortium and submitted in PDF form via the Electronic Proposal Submission System by the lead researcher representing the coordinator.
The full proposals shall be written in English by the consortium and submitted in PDF form via the Electronic Proposal Submission System by the lead researcher representing the coordinator.
Submission of F.R.S-FNRS proposal:
Applicants must provide basic administrative data by submitting an administrative application on e-space within 5 working days after the general deadline of the call to be eligible. Please select the “PINT-MULTI” funding instrument when creating the administrative application. This call follows a one-step procedure.
Deadlines:
Pre-proposal: March 27, 2025 at 16:00 CET
Full Proposals: September 11, 2025 at 16:00 CEST
e-space: April 03, 2025 at 14:00 (CEST)
Requis d'admission
Eligibility rules for the consortia
Participating countries/regions are the countries/regions who have at least one funding organisation participating in the Cofund Call.
African Organisations from countries/regions not participating with funding organisations in the Cofund Call are eligible to apply for funding, although the resources available for this are limited.
A consortium applying to the Cofund Call must consist of at least four project partners: at least two independent legal entities from two different Member States from the European Union or Horizon Europe associated countries and another two independent legal entities from two countries from thein African Union. There is no limit to the maximum consortium size, but it should be suitable for the budget level and complexity of the project and each partner should have at least 10% of the total Person Months (PMs) in order to demonstrate the transnational added value of collaboration.
Eligibility rules for F.R.S. - FNRS
Applicants requesting funding from F.R.S. FNRS must comply with the following rules.
The applicant must be affiliated to a university from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB).
At the closure of the call, the applicant should also:
- Be a permanent researcher of F.R.S-FNRS (Chercheur qualifié, maître de recherches ou Directeur de recherche) or;
- Hold a tenure track position (or an assimilated position including pending tenure track) with a research institution from the FWB
After the submission of applications, the F.R.S.-FNRS and the research institutions are required to verify the eligibility of the candidates. The F.R.S.-FNRS reserves the right to refuse those whose eligibility criteria would not comply with the Regulation.
In order the check the compliance with these eligibility criteria, please contact your contact person at ULB-TTO (see details below). T
The complete F.R.S-FNRS rules for international research projects is available at the following link: https://www.frs-fnrs.be/docs/Reglement-et-documents/International/FRS-FNRS_PINT-Multi.pdf
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