FOND ZA ZASTITU OKOLISA I ENERGETSKU UCINKOVITOST

Their core work

The Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency Fund (FZOEU) is Croatia's national public fund responsible for co-financing environmental protection and energy efficiency projects across the country. In practice, it channels national budget and EU funds to Croatian entities working on clean energy transition, building retrofits, and environmental remediation. In the H2020 context, FZOEU participated as a national co-funding body in ERA-NET Cofund smart grid initiatives, providing Croatian co-investment alongside European counterparts and connecting national energy actors to transnational research networks. Their contribution is primarily institutional and financial — bridging Croatian public policy with European smart energy research programs.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their H2020 participation began (2015) with a broad smart grids and renewable integration framing — typical of early ERA-NET calls focused on cross-border knowledge exchange. By the follow-on program (2018), the focus had narrowed and deepened toward integrated regional energy systems, with explicit attention to heating and cooling networks alongside electricity, and an emerging interest in mobilising local utilities and start-ups as delivery actors. This reflects a European-wide shift from research-stage smart grid concepts toward implementation at the distribution level, which FZOEU tracks through its co-funding role.

FZOEU is moving toward integrated district-level energy systems — heating, cooling, and electricity combined — with growing interest in engaging local utilities and start-ups as the implementation layer; future collaborations are likely to involve regional decarbonisation programs rather than pure electricity-grid research.

How they like to work

FZOEU has never coordinated an H2020 project — in both participations they joined as a partner within large ERA-NET Cofund consortia, which is the expected posture for a national co-funding body. ERA-NET consortia are inherently broad, which explains their unusually wide network (35 partners, 22 countries) despite only two projects. Working with them means engaging a public-sector institutional partner who brings national co-financing capacity and regulatory access in Croatia, rather than hands-on technical research.

Across two ERA-NET projects, FZOEU has connected with 35 unique partners in 22 countries — an exceptionally broad network relative to project count, a direct result of ERA-NET's design as pan-European funding alliances. Their geographic footprint spans the full EU energy research space, with no visible concentration in a single sub-region.

What sets them apart

FZOEU is one of the very few Croatian public bodies with direct H2020 participation in smart energy ERA-NETs, giving it a formal seat in European energy research governance. For consortium builders who need a Croatian national funding authority to unlock co-investment or satisfy geographic diversity requirements, FZOEU is the natural contact point. Their value is institutional access and national policy leverage in Croatia's energy transition, not bench research.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ERANet SmartGridPlus
  This was FZOEU's entry into European H2020 collaboration, establishing their position as Croatia's co-funder in the ERA-NET smart grid community and generating the EUR 119,070 that represents their total recorded EC support.
• EN SGplusRegSys
  A direct follow-on to SmartGridPlus, this project extended the scope to integrated regional energy systems including district heating and cooling — evidence of programmatic continuity and an evolving mandate beyond pure electricity grids.