Fully funded through the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the scheme is aimed at existing industrial installations and designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in energy-intensive sectors.

Support will be provided in the form of direct grants, with eligible technologies extending beyond hydrogen to include electrification, waste-heat recovery, and carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS).

Spain estimates the measure will deliver annual emissions savings of around 1.6 million tonnes of CO2.

Funding will be made available to companies of all sizes operating both within and outside the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS).

Projects are required to be operational within 60 months, with aid not permitted to finance production capacity expansions.

The scheme will be open on a first-come, first-served basis until the €408m budget is exhausted, with individual project support capped at €200m ($235m).

The initiative comes under the EU’s Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework, which allows member states to fast-track support for industrial decarbonisation technologies essential to reaching EU Net Zero targets.