Criteria and process for awarding grants for environmental technology projects.
Criteria for awarding grants (non-exhaustive)
- To award a grant, the FOEN must receive an application in writing from an eligible project partner. Applications may be submitted in one of the national languages (German, French, Italian) or in English.
- Submitted projects must provide information on the criteria of environmental benefits, innovation, economic and technical feasibility, including market chances, added value for Switzerland and other aspects of sustainability.
- Support may be granted if the FOEN deems that the abovementioned criteria are met and the environmental technology promotion funds have not already been awarded to other projects.
- A federal panel of environmental technology experts decides on cases in which over CHF 50,000 of funding is requested.
- There is no legal entitlement to a grant.
- At least 50% of all qualifying project costs must be assumed by applicants. As an exception, the FOEN may cover more than 50% of the costs for feasibility studies under CHF 50,000.
- Subsequent commercial use of the results must be plausibly demonstrated.
- Obligation to repay grants when projects are commercialised: The amount of the FOEN’s grant must be repaid once the results are used for commercial purposes.
Grant application process
- To avoid misrepresentations, errors and the resulting disappointment, you should contact the Innovation Section before submitting an application.
Contact: 058 469 69 10 and innovation@bafu.admin.ch - A 1 to 2-page comprehensive project outline and a telephone call should largely suffice to clarify whether a project basically qualifies for a grant.
- Once this has been done, a grant application may be submitted. Grant applications must be complete, regardless of the requested amount.
Approval process
- Small projects (feasibility studies): If the requested federal contribution is less than CHF 50,000, the Innovation Section, in collaboration with the FOEN division concerned with the project topic, decides whether the project should receive support.
- Projects: When over CHF 50,000 is requested, the project will be evaluated by the federal expert commission for environmental technology. First, the grant application will be checked to ensure that it is correct and complete. Applicants may revise their application. They will be invited to present their project at the next meeting of the expert commission. At its meetings, the expert commission decides which projects are approved and sets any conditions that will apply to them.
- The expert commission is composed of experts from the FOEN, the SFOE, and Innosuisse.
- The frequency of the expert commission meetings depends on the quantity of submitted grant applications and the available budget. In general, they take place twice per year.
Next meeting of the expert commission
For the continuation of Environmental technology promotion, a new commitment credit for the years 2024-2028 has to be approved by the Federal Council and Parliament. The decision is expected at the end of 2023. At the beginning of 2024, we will announce here until when new applications can be submitted and when the next expert meeting will take place
Last modification 13.06.2023
