Specific Challenge:

Responding to the climate change challenge requires climate-informed decision-making at all levels. The challenge is to minimise risks and costs and to seize opportunities.

Climate services (see introduction to this section of the call for a definition) have the potential to build the intelligence behind this transition, through the transformation of the wealth of data, information, model output and related methodologies into customised services and products that mainstream climate change into decisions and actions at all levels.

Bringing climate services to the market requires serving the demand of end-users and developing the business interface between suppliers and users of climate services.

The specific challenge of this action lies in the development of climate services concepts that are ready to be used, or show potential for future deployment, demonstrating the added value of using climate information and services by end-users in their operational decision-making.

Scope:

Proposals should address only one of the following:

a) Demonstration of climate services (2016 – Innovation Action – IA): In order to measure the added value of climate services for end-users, they must be 'user-centric'. As such, climate services need to be co-designed and co-developed through close collaboration of suppliers/purveyors and users. This action will support the user-driven demonstration of climate services in sectors or business networks in which their deployment can already take place at the current state of knowledge, or with limited incremental efforts. Proposals therefore need to prove the maturity and sustainability of the concept, while also addressing the replicability and marketability of the proposed services.

The action funded must respond to a formulated need for climate services by end-users that are served by climate service suppliers or business intermediaries; the demonstration project must be co-designed and co-developed with these end-users. The core of the action should be the demonstration of climate services in relation to issues where climate-related intelligence can support tangible decision-making processes in the public or private domain.

Actions with the main objective of developing supply-driven methodologies, assessing knowledge gaps or pure networking activities will not be funded.

The added value of the climate service provided has to be measurable and should be validated by the end-users collaborating in the demonstration projects. The projects should communicate the added value of the services to other relevant end-user communities that must be specified in the proposal. If relevant, gender aspects in relation to the services may be addressed. The action should also adequately address the barriers which currently hamper the full deployment of climate services in the given area and solutions to tackle these.

Given the focus on demonstrating the added value of a proven concept, the projects should be capable of delivering final results in a relatively short time period (typically within a project duration of two to three years). The funded action for climate services may be part of a larger development (e.g. infrastructure, wind farm) that is funded by additional or follow-up resources, be it private or public. One example is the relevant regional/national schemes under the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF), in particular under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), or other relevant funds such as the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA II). Please note, however, that reference to such additional or follow-up funding will not lead automatically to a higher score in the evaluation of the proposal.

The response to the Call for Ideas launched by the Commission in December 2014 showed a wide range of demonstration possibilities with estimated budgets between EUR 0.8 million to EUR 5 million. Based on this outcome, the Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

a) The project results are expected to contribute to:

• facilitating rapid deployment and market uptake of climate services by demonstrating their added value;
• providing added-value for the decision-making process addressed by the project, in terms of effectiveness, value creation, optimised opportunities and minimised risks;
• increasing the provision of climate services with added value to the end-users;
• fostering market uptake of climate services;
• offering concrete solutions to overcome barriers hampering deployment of climate services in the specific area of application.