58,5 Million for green chemistry in West Brabant
This month, the province of North Brabant organised a meeting about the Just Transition Fund (JTF) at the Green Chemistry Campus in Bergen op Zoom. For West Brabant, € 58.5 million is available from this fund, which is intended for a fair transition to a climate-neutral Europe.
The Just Transition Fund (JTF) is a new EU fund whose main objective is to enable areas and their inhabitants most affected by the transition to climate neutrality to cope with the socio-economic and environmental impacts of the transition to a climate neutral Europe.
- Meer informatie over het JTF vind je in de pdf die de provincie Noord-Brabant heeft samengesteld.
- Watch the stakeholders meeting from 17 May here
The Fund will finance diversification and modernisation of the regional economy and mitigate the negative effects on employment.
Europe’s ambition to become climate-neutral by 2050 is accompanied by major socio-economic challenges. The Transition Fund offers vulnerable areas financial support for investments in areas such as the sustainability of raw materials (circularity), the digitisation of production processes, clean energy technologies, the reduction of emissions and the retraining of workers.
The COROP area West-Brabant is one of the six regions in the Netherlands that qualify for JTF. The total JTF budget for the Netherlands amounts to around € 630 million in the coming programme period. For West-Brabant, a budget of €58.5 million is available for the period until 2027. Approximately 70% of the funds (around €40 million of the West Brabant budget) must be allocated before the end of 2023 and spent before the end of 2026. This is because half of the budget comes from the European Crisis and Recovery Fund, which expires at the end of 2023.
The JTF funds are available for projects focused on innovation that lead to economic diversification, modernisation and reconversion (track 1), e.g. the energy and raw materials transition. But also investments aimed at the ‘hardware’ needed for the energy transition (track 2).
On the other hand, the focus of the programme is on the labour market (Track 3). This involves the creation of new jobs, retraining of employees and job-seekers, assistance in finding work for job-seekers and active integration of job-seekers. There is an additional focus on young people. With JTF, physical investments can also be made to benefit the labour market.
On 17 May, the Province of North Brabant and the Green Chemistry Campus organised a stakeholders meeting to inform participants about the preparations for the JTF programme and what kind of projects are eligible for subsidy.