General conditions

1. Admissibility conditions: described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System

2. Eligible countries: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.

3. Other eligibility conditions: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

If projects use satellite-based earth observation, positioning, navigation and/or related timing data and services, beneficiaries must make use of Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS (other data and services may additionally be used).

4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes

5. Evaluation and award:

• Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes

• Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual

• Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes

6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes

The funding rate is 60% of the eligible costs, except for non-profit legal entities where the funding rate is up to 100% of the total eligible costs.

Specific conditions

7. Specific conditions: described in the specific topic of the Work Programme

Documents

Call documents:

Standard application form — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System

Standard application form (HE RIA, IA)

Standard application form (HE RIA IA Stage 1)

MGA

HE General MGA v1.0

HE Unit MGA v1.0

Call-specific instructions

Detailed budget table (HE LS)

Information on financial support to third parties (HE)

Guidance: "Lump sums - what do I need to know?"

Additional documents:

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 1. General Introduction

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 8. Climate, Energy and Mobility

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 13. General Annexes

HE Programme Guide

HE Framework Programme and Rules for Participation Regulation 2021/695

HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764

EU Financial Regulation

Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment

EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual

Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions

Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement

As Li metal anodes will be needed for the Gen 4b, Gen 4c and Gen 5 batteries, it is important to create a European production chain for their manufacturing, in order to guarantee secure supply chains for the next generation battery producers with a focus on high performance and recyclability for Gen 4b, Gen4c or Gen5 cells.

The proposed project is expected to contribute to all the following outcomes:

1. Reduction of strategic dependencies for critical raw materials by promoting resource efficiency.
2. Energy consumption/carbon footprint of processing 10% lower than SoA.
3. Throughput of Li foil and/or electrode production to support cell manufacturing, including a technical pathway towards production at MWh/(sub-)GWh scale.
4. Ensure stability of Li during handling, processing and operation using coatings or other protective technologies (e.g. barriers/protective layers).
5. Processing of Li (Metal) and Li electrodes within cell assembly at industrial scale, including, but not limited to, high-quality cutting of the Li foil and/or electrode.
6. Homogeneous Li films with thickness below 20µm, contributing towards energy density levels of 400-500 Wh/kg.
7. The developed process should be compatible with recycling targets (with respect to purification of scrap with protective coating) and assure recyclability to more than 70% of Li metal in battery waste, (90% Li metal for production scrap).
8. The proposed project is encouraged to contribute to a competitive price of 75€/kWh at pack level.

A demonstration of the performance of Li at cell level in SoA benchmark cell (at least TRL5 with at least 1 Ah capacity). Validation in Generation 4b, 4c and/or Generation 5 cells is highly encouraged.

Proposals under this topic are expected to cover all of the following bullet points:

• Sustainable, cost-efficient and large-scale production of Li-metal foils and/ or electrodes, demonstrated up to pilot level during the project. Activities can include, but are not limited to, extrusion, comparison extrusion / electrostatic spray, rolling and co-rolling. However, extensive cell design and development are out of the scope as this topic focuses on the Li anode production.
• Control of the passivation of Li metal films, and to understand how the passivation is linked with the dry room conditions and requirements. The goal is to find the optimal way: high passivation and lower quality dry room, or low passivation and higher quality dry room, and how these selections are linked with cost, energy consumption and performance of the cells.

The project is expected to also guarantee safety of the Li film production and handling, which has to be demonstrated in a process that is compatible for large scale production.

Plans for the exploitation and dissemination of results for proposals submitted under this topic should include a strong business case and sound exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination. The exploitation plans should include preliminary plans for scalability, commercialisation, and deployment (feasibility study, business plan).

Collaboration with other projects from calls HORIZON-CL5-2023-02-01 Advanced materials and cells development enabling large-scale production of Gen4 solid-state batteries for mobility applications and/or HORIZON-CL5-2024-02-02 Post-Li-ion technologies and relevant manufacturing techniques for mobility applications (Generation 5) is expected.

The project is encouraged to cooperate with projects stemming from call topic HORIZON-CL5-2023-01-01 Technologies for sustainable, low carbon and cost-efficient downstream processing and production of battery-grade materials.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on Batteries (Batt4EU). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on the results to the European Partnership on Batteries (Batt4EU) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 6-7 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.