Newheat selected by the EU Innovation Fund for its first international project

We are one of 32 grant winners out of the 232 candidates to have applied from all over Europe. The fund selects projects for their innovative and game changing nature in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions.

DECARBOMALT CROATIA aims to decarbonize a food industry factory by covering 54% of its process heat needs as a first step, and potentially up to 100% within five or six years. This will be the largest facility for the production of solar heat for industrial processes in Europe. The cost of the project is 7.5 million euros, 4.5 million euros of which will be covered by the Innovation Fund grant.

Under the project, Newheat will build a 15 MWth solar thermal plant, a 4,000 m3  storage system and two types of heat pump for preheating the air used for drying the malt. This combination of technology – which is unprecedented at this scale – will create synergies in terms of efficiency, coverage of the site’s needs, security of supply and development potential within the context of energy transition. DECARBOMALT CROATIA will require no fuel of either fossil or organic origin and will keep electricity consumption to a minimum.

The food industry site in question today emits approximately 7,500 tonnes of CO2 a year. By supplying about 20 GWh of renewable heat per year, DECARBOMALT CROATIA will avoid 4,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year from 2023.

The project’s effectiveness in terms of avoiding greenhouse gas emissions, its level of innovation, maturity, upgradability and low cost per tonne of emissions reductions enabled it to meet the criteria of the European Commission Innovation Fund, one of the world’s largest funding programmes (EUR 20 billion for the 2020-2030 period) for the demonstration of innovative low-carbon technologies, under its first call for projects.

To find out more about this program driven by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency, and the different projets selected, click here