STEP Productive Innovation : Energy

COMPETE2030-2026-12 — STEP Productive Innovation — Energy. Published on 30 September 2026. Portugal 2030 Programme / STEP Platform.

Applications from 30/09/2026 to 04/01/2027, until 17:00. Indicative duration of the operation: 24 months, unless duly justified. Pre-project year: 2025.

Companies of any size, nature and legal form, with organised accounts. Individual applications; up to two separate operations per beneficiary. A balanced economic and financial situation and compliance with the REITD requirements are required.

Norte, Centro and Alentejo. Investment in facilities physically located in the regions covered; check the boundaries of the funding programme in each region.

Clean and resource-efficient technologies, including net-zero technologies and critical energy solutions. Covers final products, components and specific machinery, critical raw materials and specialised services essential to the value chain. Excluded, in particular: financial and insurance activities, defence and gambling, according to CAE and other legal exclusions.

Promote innovative productive investment, with tradable and internationalisable goods and services, strengthening Europe's strategic autonomy. Covers new facilities, diversification into new products/services and fundamental changes to production processes. The technology must show industrial/commercial maturity, as a rule TRL 8 or higher.

Eligible expenditure per application: minimum €3,000,000 and below €25,000,000, unless duly justified and accepted. The amounts refer to eligible cost, not total gross investment.

Tangible assets: machinery and equipment (not running on fossil fuels), installation and IT equipment. Intangible assets: patents, licences, technical know-how and software. SMEs only: expense certification/validation, engineering services, studies, diagnoses, audits, DNSH reports, marketing plans and architecture/engineering projects. Construction, refurbishment and other works when justified, up to 35% of the total eligible cost, unless an exception is accepted. Limits: CC/ROC up to €5,000; DNSH studies up to €15,000; intangibles in large companies up to 50%.

Non-repayable grant, with an indicative budget of €100M. Up to 70%, subject to the maximum intensities of the STEP regional aid map. The effective rate depends on company size, location and the State aid framework; it is not an automatic rate for all projects. Payments by advances (initial up to 10%, against invoice/guarantee), reimbursements and final balance.

Demonstrate the critical nature of the STEP technology, technical and financial viability, incentive effect (no work started before the application, except eligible preparatory work) and DNSH compliance. A technical annex in English, of up to 45 pages, is mandatory. See Annex E for the exact scope of the technologies and the aid map for the applicable rate.