The EIC Cooling Portfolio Strategic Plan, unveiled in December 2025, outlines a coordinated approach to advancing clean and efficient cooling technologies across Europe. The portfolio brings together deep-tech projects focused on the entire cooling value chain—from generation and storage to transport and intelligent management—targeting applications in buildings, industry, food processing, data centers, quantum computing, and medical refrigeration.
Key Focus Areas for the portfolio are:
- Technology Innovation: Projects explore novel solid-state cooling mechanisms such as barocaloric, electrocaloric, and magnetic refrigeration (e.g., FROSTBIT, COOLPOL, MAGCCINE, LEMON).
- System Integration: Emphasis on hybrid technologies, functionalized materials, and soft fault control systems to enable scalable, efficient, and sustainable cooling solutions.
- Standardization & Metrics: A unified set of performance metrics and KPIs is being developed to allow consistent comparison across diverse technologies.
- Regulatory & Market Alignment: Activities include harmonizing methodologies, aligning with future EU regulations, and preparing for market uptake.
Governance and collaboration
The portfolio is managed by Paolo Bondavalli, EIC Programme Manager, with support from Project Officers and a Steering Committee.
- Four working groups (WGs) drive collaboration:
- Technology Integration, Validation, and Demonstration
- Transition of Technology to Innovation
- Regulation, Ethics, and Trustworthiness
- Communication and Dissemination
- Annual meetings, including a major event hosted by Delft University of Technology in November 2025, facilitate knowledge exchange, LCA workshops, and joint planning for 2026.
The strategic objectives can be summarized as:
- Develop scalable, non-CRM-based cooling systems with high efficiency and low environmental impact.
- Enable milli-Kelvin cooling for quantum technologies (e.g., LEMON).
- Create first-of-a-kind solid-state refrigerators (e.g., FROSTBIT’s barocaloric device).
- Advance dynamic cooling for data centers (e.g., DYMAN’s self-cooled HPC systems).
The strategic plan is updated annually and publicly available on the EIC website. It serves as a living document guiding project collaboration, innovation pathways, and policy alignment to support Europe’s transition to a sustainable cold economy.