The EUCF funding is open to municipalities/local authorities, groupings of municipalities/local authorities, and local public entities aggregating municipalities/local authorities from all EU Member States, the EEA-EFTA States of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, and the United Kingdom.

The EUCF submission process consists of two steps:

The eligibility check verifies whether applicants are eligible to apply for EUCF support.

After successfully passing the eligibility check, applicants are invited to register, create a user profile and complete the full application form, prepare the required supporting documents and submit them via the EUCF website user zone (access through the website).

Applications are evaluated by a dedicated evaluation team during a 2-months period after the closing of the call.

Applications are evaluated based on five evaluation criteria:

The evaluators also verify if all supporting documents have been submitted.

Within the limit of the available budget, the best-scored applications are selected to receive EUCF support. Full details on the selection process are published on https://www.eucityfacility.eu/apply-for-eucf-support/application-process.html

The objective of the EUCF is to build a substantial pipeline of sustainable energy investment projects across municipalities/local authorities (or their groupings) in Europe, by providing support to the development of investment concepts. The investment concepts will represent an initial step towards fully-fledged business and financial plans and facilitate the subsequent mobilisation of (local) investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The types of activities that qualify for receiving financial support are activities which are necessary for the development of investment concepts, such as feasibility studies, engineering analyses, legal analyses, social studies, market studies, financial analyses, and further supporting tasks.

The grant amount can be used for in-house staff, for external experts/sub-contractors or for other expenses that are required for the investment concept development.