The European Commission has earmarked nearly €120 million (~$134 million) for Industrial Carbon Management (ICM) under the Horizon Europe 2026-2027 work programs, with submission deadlines running from March 2027 through December 2027.

The allocation marks a strategic shift relative to 2025 funding. The Commission is concentrating capital on pre-commercial CO2 storage readiness, regional CCUS infrastructure, and integrated carbon capture, utilization and storage value chains rather than spreading it thinly across earlier-stage research.

How is the €120 million split?

The package divides into five dedicated funding streams, each targeting a specific technological or regulatory bottleneck in the European carbon management sector:

• €43.8 million for efficient CO2 capture, purification and utilization pathways to manufacture cost-competitive carbon-derived products.
• €30 million to de-risk local and regional industrial CCS and CCU hubs.
• €25 million for pre-commercial appraisal of CO2 storage in deep saline aquifers, including test drilling and injectivity trials.
• €16 million to scale direct air capture (DAC) platforms toward pilot demonstration stage.
• €5 million to support policy implementation and technical standards for the EU's upcoming cross-border CO2 transport and storage infrastructure framework.

When do applicants have to move?

Project consortia and technology developers face three phased call deadlines through 2027:

• March 31, 2027 — direct air capture pilot demonstration proposals.
• September 15, 2027 — CO2 transport and storage infrastructure policy support initiatives.
• December 1, 2027 — local and regional industrial CCUS cluster de-risking grants.

What sits behind the funding push?

The package aligns with the EU's broader Industrial Carbon Management Strategy, which targets deployment of at least 50 million tonnes of annual CO2 storage capacity across Member States by 2030. That target now has a funding architecture behind it, and the emphasis on storage appraisal — test drilling and injectivity trials in deep saline aquifers — signals where Brussels sees the binding constraint on the 2030 capacity goal.

The €5 million policy stream matters separately. It funds technical standards for the cross-border CO2 transport and storage framework, the regulatory scaffolding that will determine how captured CO2 moves from emitters and DAC sites to storage operators across national borders.

For carbon-derived product manufacturers, the €43.8 million utilization stream is the largest single allocation, aimed at pushing carbon-derived goods toward cost competitiveness with fossil-based equivalents.

What happens next?

The March 31, 2027 DAC deadline comes first and will show whether the pilot-stage pipeline is ready to absorb the EU's €16 million DAC commitment. The December 1, 2027 cluster deadline — covering the €30 million hub de-risking stream — closes the cycle and will indicate whether regional CCUS consortia can convert announced hub projects into financeable, built infrastructure on the timeline the 2030 storage target demands.