Notice has been given in the Official Journal of the European Union on January, 6th, 2009, on the launch of a call for proposals under the “2009 Cooperation” work programme of the 7th EC Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities. This calls aims to fund coordinated reserach projects between European and Brazilian teams.

In the framework of the EU-Brazil S&T Cooperation Agreement, the European Commission representing the European Community (EC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT) of the Government of Brazil are working together to enhance opportunities for coordinated activities in second generation biofuels research between European and Brazilian teams. This resulted in the launching of this coordinated call, FP7-ENERGY-2009-BRAZIL, leading to coordinated projects financed respectively by the European Commission and the Ministry of Science and Technology on equivalent resources, in order to generate balanced projects.

The proposals for coordinated R&D projects must be clearly relevant to second generation biofuels. The expected coordinated projects, which fall under the framework of the “2009 Cooperation” work programme of the 7th EC Framework Programme, should focus on the development of advanced technologies for the production of 2nd generation biofuels from Brazilian and European feedstocks.

The research activities wil focus on the technological developments and improvements concerning the feedstock, conversion technologies, process integration and sustainability.

Proposals will be only selected on the condition that the corresponding coordinated project is also selected for funding by the MCT.

The expected impact of the projects funded will be focused on the benefit from the complementarities of expertise and experience in EU and Brazil. Projects will pave the way for significant enhancement in the cooperation between key researchers, institutions and industries that are active in biofuel research in EU and Brazil.

Up to two projects will be funded on each side. The project duration could be up to 4 years for each of the coordinated projects. The active participation of relevant industrial partners is necessary for achieving the full impact of the project. This will be considered in the evaluation.

Budget and application deadlines

This Call for proposals has an indicative budget of 4 Million Euro from the 2009 budget. The final budget awarded to this call, following the evaluation of projects, may vary by up to 10% of the total value of the call.

Proposals may be submitted until May, 5th, 2009 at 17.00.00 (Brussels local time) and, for the coordinated project funded by the Brazilian authorities, on May, 5th, 2009 at 11.00.00 (Brazil local time) according to the respective requirements of the EC and the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT).

Aditional informtions as well as the relevant documents can be found at the CORDIS website.