Webinar I: Introduction to the Call for Projects 2023 and its key features

Radina: Hello, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Depending on where you might be today. My name is Radina, and I’m an advisor at the Technical Support Unit, or the TSU, as we call it for short, which is the Secretariat of the Mitigation Action Facility. I am pleased to welcome you to today’s webinar, during which we would like to introduce you to the Mitigation Action Facility and our current Call for Projects.
Before we start, I would like to ask you to fill out a survey for us, providing us with some background on who is listening today. My colleague Tanisha will post a link in the Q&A section, and I would appreciate it if you could take a second to fill out this survey for us.

Again, thank you for that and a warm welcome from Berlin, Germany, and your interest in the first webinar on the Call for Projects 2023 of the Mitigation Action Facility. Before we dive deep into today’s webinar, I would like to go over with you on what are the goals for today’s webinar.

First, we would like to provide you with an overview of the Mitigation Action Facility and introduce you to the priority sectors of the Mitigation Action Facility. Second, we’ll look at the Call for Projects 2023, look at the Call process and timeline and introduce the new simplified Project Concept Phase to you.

Last but not least, we’ll take your questions throughout the webinar, address a few as part of our Q&A session and point you to valuable resources. You can always refer to outside of this webinar. As I mentioned, this webinar will also be recorded and uploaded on our website.

Second, I would like to introduce and show you who else is joining me today from our side, and we’ll guide you through the different sections of today’s webinar. As you see me here, I’m on the right. I’m also joined on the left by Minh, an advisor and our monitoring expert here at the TSU.
We also have the right Nina, an advisor and our Call management lead. Last but not least, we have Tanisha, who is our program assistant. Everyone is based in Berlin, and happy to jump on board and walk you through the rest of the topics today. Here again, is the structure of the webinar.

I will retake the stage and talk to you about the Mitigation Action Facility. Then Nina will take the stage and walk you through the key features and timelines and look at the Project Concept Phase.
And last but not least, for all questions you are now posting, Tanisha and Minh will take a look and will address these, and whatever questions we haven’t been able to pick up today, we’ll follow up as part of the second webinar. And if, in any case, you have urgent questions, you’re also welcome to reach out to us directly at the contact.

With no further ado, I would like to now hand over the words to Tanisha for a few aspects on the technical side.

Tanisha: Thank you, Radina. And hello, everyone. I will say a few points about the technical overview. This is fairly straight forward, so on the top right of your control panel, you will see that your camera is off, and you are automatically muted.
You can click on the Q&A button on the top half of your screen to submit your questions.
Another point about the subtitles. You can see three dots on the top of your screen, which will say more when you click on them. You can then click on language and speech. And further, click on turn on live captions. This will give you live subtitles or captions during the webinar. You can also click on the right side for the three dots and then click on change caption language, and then you can select the language in that you want to see these subtitles.
And please do remember that the meeting chat is disabled, so you can post your questions in the Q&A section.
That’s all. Thank you. Back to you, Radina.

Radina: Thank you, Tanisha, for guiding us over the few key features in MS Teams. And with that, I would like to now move to the next section, which I would like to provide you with a few insights as to who we are. First, the team that is speaking to you today, the Technical Support Unit (TSU) is the Secretariat of the Mitigation Action Facility.
And the Mitigation Action Facility itself is a multi-donor fund with contributions from Germany, the UK, Denmark, the EU, and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF). The Mitigation Action Facility was first created in 2012 as the NAMA Facility for those who have been following us for some time.

At COP 27 in Egypt last November while celebrating the 10th anniversary of the NAMA Facility, the Board made an announcement and a name change to what is now the Mitigation Action Facility, going effective this year. The rebranding restates the Mitigation Action Facility’s commitment to fund ambitious climate change mitigation projects, to implement Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and to Long-Term Strategies that are central to meeting the Paris Agreement goals while shifting towards driving decarbonisation in priority sectors. So far, the Donors have committed about EUR 668 million. The Mitigation Action Facility continues to operate through annual Calls for Projects.
The Calls are competitive, and only the best projects are selected. As part of this webinar, we will give you an overview of how you can participate in our current upcoming Call for Projects 2023 while highlighting the simplified application process. And second, how we’ll be assessing your submission.

As you can see on the slide, our portfolio currently consists of 47 projects in 33 countries. Some countries have two or three projects even. For further information, we invite you to visit our website for more details on these projects.
As with the NAMA Facility and now as we advance under the Mitigation Action Facility, we do not have specific regions, as highlighted during the last COP. As I mentioned earlier, we do have specific sectors, namely transport, energy, and industry, but we also welcome cross-sectoral projects linked to one of these.
A few words about how the Facility operates: so, the Mitigation Action Facility operates on the base of competitive annual Calls for Projects for implementation in ODA-eligible countries, which focus on the three priority sectors. The projects combine on one side technical assistance, which includes measures to develop capacities in countries and provide policy support and an improved enabling environment. And a financial mechanism or instrument for unlocking public and private investments, scaling and replicating solutions in countries and ensuring sustainability.
What makes funding from the Mitigation Action Facility attractive and why apply for funding first? All funding provided by the facility is grant-based. It is open to all ODA-eligible countries; no accreditation is required from applicants, and support for implementation is provided.

The Facility would provide support for the implementation of national climate plans and strategies, and through the project cycle phases, extensive advice is provided, including the provision of funding support for the detailed preparation of proposals. Up to EUR 25 million is available per project for technical assistance and financial cooperation to support ambitious mitigation projects.
We also organise regular exchanges on cross-cutting topics such as financial mechanisms, monitoring, and gender, and there’s an opportunity for projects to learn from each other and with each other.
Last but not least before I hand over the word. Here’s a quick look at the priority sectors as I announced earlier. As mentioned earlier at COP 27 in November in Egypt, the Mitigation Action Facility restated its commitment to fund ambitious mitigation actions to implement and support projects aligned with nationally determined contributions and long-term strategies that are central to meeting the Paris Agreement while driving decarbonisation in priority sectors.

The Mitigation Action Facility strives to follow the logic of the IPCC Common Reporting Framework, as well as incorporate recommendations as outlined in the Breakthrough Agenda Report 2022. According to the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC report in 2021, energy transport and industry cumulatively accounted for more than 40 gigatons CO2 equivalent or what makes up for 67% of the annual global greenhouse gas emissions.
As I highlighted earlier, these are the three priority sectors we are going to be supporting and focusing on while cross-sectoral projects linked to these priority sectors are also welcome. More information you can find in the FAQ section on our website. And without any further ado, I’d like to stop here and give the opportunity for Nina to give us more information on the Call of Projects this year.

Nina: Thank you very much, Radina. Welcome everyone from my side too. We are very excited about the upcoming Call for Projects 2023. It’ll be open from 2 June, and applications will be made through an official open application platform (OAP), but I will talk about that a bit more later. Now let’s see the key features of this new Call for Projects, which of course builds upon what Radina just said and presented for the entire Mitigation Action Facility.
As you see, we decided to split key features into continuous aspects that are similar to the previous Calls for Projects that were held under the label of the NAMA Facility, the current Mitigation Action Facility. And some new features that are very specific to this Call for Projects 2023.

Probably one of the key new features and you may have already heard about that, is an introduction of the Project Concept Phase. It will be mandatory. And Applicants will only be required to fill in a so-called short questionnaire or survey in an open application platform (OAP).
We refer to it as OAP, and it’ll be a step-by-step questionnaire with questions that will require further elaboration in the Project Outline afterwards. But all in all, it’ll be around a six- or seven-page document without additional supplementary documents.

So, Applicants will only need to fill in the questionnaire and submit it and there will be no expectations from the Mitigation Action Facility that additional supplementary documents are provided. As I said, the Project Concept Phase will be mandatory. Later, I will show you where it is located in the Mitigation Action Facility project cycle.
So far, what is important for general information and for your understanding is that the Project Concept Phase is a mandatory phase; the submission of Project Outlines will then follow as you see on the slides. Up to 25 Project Concepts will be selected to move into the Project Outline Phase. This is an agreed limit independently of the number of Project Concepts we will receive overall.

The selected Project Concepts will be given time to develop a full-fledged Project Outline, which will follow a structure similar to the previous Calls with the necessity of developing and submitting additional annexes.
But this is not the focus of this webinar. With this webinar, we want to raise your awareness about the Project Concept Phase and about the fact that it is simple. We see it as an approach and as a way to simplify the application process. It also enables you to let us know about your ideas and concepts for the ambitious reduction of greenhouse gas emissions within the three priority sectors.

Radina has already mentioned it, and we would encourage you to go to the website of the Mitigation Action Facility, to the Call section and to read through FAQs to understand better what is included in the scope of energy, transport and industry sectors. What is important to highlight is, of course, that cross-sectoral projects linked to one of the priority sectors are welcome as well. You can find examples on our website too.
Ambitious, enhanced, nationally determined contributions (NDCs) will be an assessment criterion in this Call for Projects. This is important information for those who are aware of the requirements of the two previous Calls held under the label of the NAMA Facility, namely Ambition Initiative Call and Ambition Initiative – Round Two.

In the previous Calls, enhanced nationally determined contributions were an eligibility criterion. This is not the case anymore. Again, we would like to emphasise that NDCs will always be part of the criteria of the Mitigation Action Facility in the selection of projects. But in the Call for Projects 2023, it’ll be an assessment criterion among other assessment criteria.
What is also important is another new aspect, which will be interesting for new Applicants who don’t know the Mitigation Action Facility or its predecessor very well. So, in this Call, it will be possible for a limited number of promising Project Concepts to receive support in the development of Outlines.

The decision on the number and the projects receiving support will be made by the Board of the Mitigation Action Facility. And as I said, of course, there are a lot of features that will continuously be applied throughout all Calls of the Mitigation Action Facility.

Of course, as I said before, it’s a focus on the implementation of nationally determined contributions, long-term strategies, and contribution of the projects to the UNFCCC negotiation process. And of course, it is an emphasis on global cooperation. So, it is a synergy, let’s say, particularly with the NDC Partnership and NDC Partnership Plans.

As Radina mentioned before, we always provide grant-based financing, but we provide it to projects that always combine technical assistance and financial cooperation as a tool for developing, designing, and implementing financial mechanisms and financial instruments that are market-based, sustainable and scalable.
The overall funding volume of the Call will be similar to the previous Calls, which is up to EUR 100 million. And the upper volume per project is like what you have seen in the Ambition Initiative Call or the Ambition Initiative – Round Two, which is EUR 25 million. So, the project can apply for funding with a maximum volume of EUR 25 million.
There is still an option for projects that target novel technologies, innovative technologies or offer a piloting modality to implement, to have a pilot within the project. You can find some examples of novel technologies on our website in the FAQ section, and we will make sure to enrich those examples with additional ones.

And of course, again, another continuous aspect is that public and private sectors are invited to submit Project Concepts. As I said before, with the introduction of the Project Concept Phase, we want to open the Call for Projects 2023 to an even wider range of applicants, so everyone is invited to participate in the Call.
On the next slide, you will see a visual representation of the project cycle of the Mitigation Action Facility, and we’ll see where the Project Concept Phase is located. So basically, starting with the Call launch. Step three: development of concepts. This is what you will have to do directly after the official opening of the Call.
I will provide you with key dates a bit later. Now you can already mark it up and save the date. The Call will open officially on 2 June 2023, and the submission of the Project Concepts will be possible until 31 July 2023. So, between 2 June and 31 July would be your time to submit the Project Concept since it is a mandatory phase. Without submitting a Project Concept, you will not be able to participate further in the next steps of the Call and in the next steps of the project cycle as you see them on the screen.

So, it’s very important to keep those dates in mind. And if you want to participate in the Call, submit your Project Concepts by 31 July. The deadline is 3:00 PM CEST. We will repeat it throughout the webinar a few times so that you remember it very well. Our idea and our main message would be to go through the General Information Document (GID) read everything and understand very well what the project cycle of the Mitigation Action Facility is.
But now please focus on the Project Concept Phase because this is what will enable potentially your participation in the next steps of the assessment and selection within the Call for Projects 2023. Now you will see again the key dates. The Call will be launched, as I said before, on 2 June during our side event at the Global NDC conference. We will publish the link to the OAP on our website. It’ll be open for submission of Project Concepts from 2 June until 31 of July. It means that you can start developing your ideas already now, but the submission through the platform itself will be open from 2 June until 31 July.

Then the assessment and selection of Project Concepts will take place. These dates are tentative, but we assume that it’ll take place between August and September 2023. For Project Concepts selected to move forward in the project cycle, they will be invited to submit Project Outlines on 01 October, and the project Outline Phase will then last from 01 October until 31 December 2023.
Assessment and selection of project outlines then will take place between January and March 2024. Again, it may sound complicated and with a lot of dates, but we would like you to focus on the Project Concept Phase. Again, it is mandatory, so you will have to submit a Project Concept to participate in the Call and in the further steps of the Call. The deadline for submitting a Project Concept is from 2 June to 31 July 2023.
That’s it for key deadlines and key aspects of the project cycle. Now, you may wonder what in general we are looking for in the projects. Partially it corresponds, of course, to what Radina said before in terms of ODA eligibility and of the focus on the three priority sectors. But for your convenience, I will go again through the necessary key project characteristics that we are looking for.

So, first, funding qualifies as official development assistance finance. This is clear. The project should be implemented in one of the three priority sectors or propose a cross-sectoral approach. Three priority sectors are energy, transport, and industry.
Cross-sectoral projects would be attached to at least one priority sector. You can find examples, as I said before, on our website, but one good example of a cross-sectoral project would be biomass to energy. So, where you link an agricultural project, agricultural waste project, with the energy sector because ultimately the implementation of the project will contribute to energy security and will provide an additional source of clean energy.
So that’s why there is a clear link to the energy sector. The project, of course, should be embedded in national development strategies and plans. If there is an NDC Partnership Plan the project should be aligned with the partnership plan or at least with NDC activities in the country. So certain engagement with NDC in-country facilitators would be required.

It should not be formalised or institutionalised within the Project Concept, but at some point, there will be a question from the Mitigation Action Facility on the alignment and synergies with the NDC Partnership. Also, NDCs is one of the assessment criteria.

The projects combine technical assistance, which is policies, regulations, capacity development, and financial cooperation. As I said before, this is a design, development and implementation of a financial mechanism, which is market-based, which is sustainable and scalable and able to leverage additional public and private investments. So, another characteristic that we look for in a project is that they should be able to mobilise additional financing beyond what is granted or provided by the Mitigation Action Facility. We need projects that are implementation ready; it means that they can be implemented in full after a short preparation phase. And what is mentioned now more explicitly in the strategic and framework documents of the Mitigation Action Facility is the topic of gender and social inclusion. Those two aspects are essential for the Facility as a whole and for the projects we support. We expect projects to offer an intersectional understanding of gender and social inclusion. It would mean moving beyond the simple acknowledgement that there is gender or social discrimination based on other social aspects, for example. So, beyond acknowledging that, we await for our projects that they will design and will foresee concrete measures and activities to address gender discrimination and social inequalities identified.

More information can be found on the Mitigation Action Facility website in the gender action plan of the Mitigation Action Facility. You can look at the GID to understand a bit more about what we are looking for, but we will encourage you to take this topic rather seriously and start already from the Project Concept Phase thinking about and reflecting on the role of the project from the point of view of gender equality and social inclusion.
Another important point linked to the three priority sectors is that of course with the introduction of three priority sectors, the Mitigation Action Facility has an opportunity to contribute to initiatives like Just Energy Transition Partnerships and the Climate Club. So, we really want synergies and a clear reference to agreements with Just Energy Transition Partnerships, and the Climate Club priorities which should be demonstrated by the project.
With that, we can move on to yet another complicated chart.
In the slide, you can see what we expect during each phase of the application of the project cycle and who is the main target audience. You also can identify who is the Applicant and who can serve as an Applicant and what are the different roles of Implementation Organisations. Also, what are Implementation Organisations, when we speak about them during the project cycle.

Again, the major focus of this webinar is the Project Concept Phase, and it is important to highlight that the submission of Concepts is open to everyone. Again, I was mentioning it already, but I want to emphasise it again: national ministries will be able to serve as Applicants, and they will not be required to nominate an institution that we call Applicant Support Partner that is then upon selection contracted during the Detailed Preparation Phase (DPP). So, for this so-called Applicant Support Partner, we will only ask national ministries, if they serve as Applicants, to nominate an Applicant Support Partner if the Project Concept is selected for the Project Outline Phase.
So, at the Project Concept Phase, the national ministry or any national agency subordinated to ministries can submit the Project Concept, and they will not be required or requested to nominate a so-called Applicant Support Partner.
Another type of Applicant that we refer to broadly is a legal entity. Also, no additional requirements for them. I will touch upon the issue of the question of what legal entity is in the next slide, but now it’s important for you to understand that also there will be no additional requests or requirements for legal entities. Just submit the Project Concept. And that’s it.

If the Project Concept is selected for the Outline Phase, then the legal entity serving as an Applicant will be asked to provide, to demonstrate an endorsement by the ministry. It’s usually the ministry responsible for the topics of environment and climate change, for the UNFCCC negotiations.
But again, it is something that will happen only during the Project Outline Phase. For the Project Concept Phase, which will be open from 2 June until 31 July, national ministries or legal entities are simply asked or required to simply submit their Project Concept, and that’s it. No additional documents.

There is no provision of endorsement letters or the additional nomination of Applicant Support Partners. You will only be required to outline your Concept at the Project Concept Phase.
And now to the topic of legal entities. It may sound very complicated, but it’s basically all national and international institutions and organisations, including commercial entities – all those institutions, organisations and entities; we refer to them broadly as legal entities and all of them can act as Applicants, again, Applicant Support Partners, is a notion we use when the national ministry is an Applicant, and legal entities can also serve as Implementation Organisations. We then use this term for organisations that implement projects.

So, after the Detailed Preparation Phase (DPP), the project proposal is submitted already by an Implementation Organisation. There are differences in eligibility requirements for Applicants, Applicant Support Partners and Implementation Organisations. So, you are invited to look at our General Information Document (GID) for more details on those topics.
What is important to remember is that eligibility criteria for applicants are minimal at the Project Concept Phase. So please just be encouraged and inspired as we are to submit your Project Concept.
Among important capacity and eligibility requirements, I would like to highlight the aspect of the public benefit purpose, which is mandatory for each project. So individual economic advantage, commercial benefit or profit cannot be generated with the use of the Mitigation Action Facility funds and only reasonable costs directly related to the project plus reasonable overheads can be covered by the Mitigation Action Facility funds.
Those rules are applicable, as I said, to all projects of the Mitigation Action Facility. So independently from the fact which institution or organisation or commercial entity submits the Project Concept. But again, it’s not; it should not be a barrier to participation, in particular for commercial entities in the Calls for Projects of the Mitigation Action Facility.

It is also important for specific commercial entities that if they’re based in the countries where the state aid law of the European Union applies, those commercial entities will need to ensure that their activities will not violate the EU state aid regulations. Again, you can find more information in GID. But the main message would be that all types of institutions, national, international institutions, and commercial entities, are very welcome to submit their Project Concepts as part of the Call of Projects 2023. Thank you.
Now, yes, the next step in this webinar: the introduction to the Project Concept Phase. I guess I’ve talked a lot about the Project Concept Phase itself, but just again, to make sure that it is well understood and that you also understand the reasons behind us introducing this specific stage.

So, the purpose of the Project Concept Phase is the simplification of the application process. We at the Mitigation Action Facility assume that those Project Concepts selected to proceed into the Project Outline Phase, and it’ll be only 25 Project Concepts, it’ll give a certain assurance to the Applicants that it is worth investing their efforts and their time and their resources into the development of the Project Outline. Because the Project Concept will already be validated by the assessors and by the Board of the Mitigation Action Facility.

So broadly, even though this is an additional application phase, we still consider it to be quite a significant simplification of the process. The Project Concept Phase will be more accessible in terms of eligibility requirements for the Applicants, and it’ll provide a possibility to address some eligibility-related shortcomings during the Outline Phase if the Project Concept is selected for the Project Outline Phase, which means, again, for example, if the national ministry applies without knowing who their Applicant Support Partner will be, there will still be time and opportunity to identify an Applicant Support Partner during the Project Outline Phase.
The absence of such a partner during the submission of a Project Concept will not become a reason for rejecting the Project Concept. And it’ll not, it should not become the reason for the national ministry to not participate in the Call for Projects 2023. The same applies to legal entities. If they don’t have an endorsement letter at the Project Concept Phase, they should apply because they will be able to cover those aspects later.
Also, if specific eligibility criteria, you will find them in GID, cannot be met by a, for example, smaller local NGO, and this problem is identified at the Project Concept Phase, there will still be an opportunity, if the Project Concept is good enough, to proceed to the project Outline Phase.

There will be an opportunity for this small local NGO with limited capacity and probably not sufficient eligibility to identify a partner and move on with the development of the Project Outline. So, all in all, we are looking for the participation of a wider range of potential applicants and partners. And of course, we want to receive new ideas. We want to receive more ideas to drive ambitious climate action.
As a next step, I’ve talked a lot about the Applicants, Applicant Support Partners and their eligibility criteria, but what we also have is eligibility criteria for Project Concepts. So, if the submitted Project Concept would not fulfil those eligibility criteria, we won’t proceed with the assessment of this Project Concept.

So please keep them in mind. They’re simple and mainly touch upon what was discussed before as part of key characteristics of projects or even key characteristics of the Mitigation Action Facility.
So, what we are looking for is the timely submission of the Project Concept. The deadline would be 3:00 PM CEST, 31 July 2023. I will remind you again that the Project Concept Phase itself will be open from 2 June until 31 July. So, just keep in mind at 3:00 PM on 31 July will be your last point in time to submit a Project Concept.

Of course, projects should be focused on three priority sectors: energy, industry and transport, or offer a cross-sectoral approach linked to one of the priority sectors.
Information should be complete, but you will be guided while using the open application platform (OAP). Information should be provided in English. The country where the project will be implemented should be eligible to receive official development assistance, but you also can consult the OECD list of ODA recipient countries for further information. It is open to everyone and available freely online.

The funding volume requested from the Mitigation Action Facility for project implementation should lie in the range between EUR 5 and 25 million excluding DPP funding. So, EUR 5 million is the smallest funding volume that you can request for the implementation. And EUR 25 million is the maximum that you can request for implementation. Detailed Preparation Phase (DPP) funding, the funding provided by the Mitigation Action Facility for the development of a Project Proposal should not be included in this range.

Envisaged implementation duration should be a minimum of three years and a maximum of five and a half years. More details are in the General Information Document (GID), just make sure that you go straight and read it.
After checking the eligibility, all Project Concepts that are considered eligible based on the criteria I just talked about will be assessed. The key assessment points are valid throughout all stages of the project cycle. Those are to different extents applied to the Project Concept, to the Project Outline, and to the Project Proposal. The points are: mitigation potential, so we always look into the mitigation potential of the project. We investigate the financial mechanism, whether the institutional setup is well defined, and whether there is a clear rationale behind the proposed mechanism. What is the phase-out concept and so on and so forth. As I said, these are the criteria, but the level of detail that we’re looking into differs between the Project Concept, the Project Outline, and the Project Proposal.

We are also looking into the technical and economic viability. It includes a clear description of technologies. The mitigation technologies the project wants to implement and appropriate business models that showcase or prove that this technology and its market take-off can be viable and can be possible. And of course, we look into barrier analysis. It is one of the cornerstones, one of the starting points in developing the Project Concept overall. So, you need to understand very well what barriers exist in the particular country, in the particular sector that prevents the take-off of the mitigation technology and the project should provide a very robust analysis of the barriers starting from behavioural, social, political ones to economic and market barriers in order to develop a coherent project with technical assistance with a financial mechanism that would address those barriers and also identify synergies and other projects that will be able to help.

After the eligibility check, we will start with the Concept assessment. It’ll include two broad, big criteria. We will assess ambition, and we will assess feasibility. And as you can see, ambition is then split into sub-criteria, including transformational change, financial ambition, and mitigation potential. And as part of the feasibility criterion, we will assess the project based on the sub-criteria of project rationale and project design.
You can find more information in the General Information Document (GID). And in the next slides, my colleague Minh will tell you a bit more about the General Information Document (GID), and we’ll also point out to other useful resources that you can look into and that will help you to develop your Project Concept.

And just a last point for me, please, keep in mind that first of all, Project Concept Phase is mandatory. Secondly, it is very easy. We only ask you to fill in a questionnaire. You won’t need to submit additional documents. And, you will have to, if you want to participate in the Call for Projects 2023, you will have to submit your Project Concept between 2 June and 31 July 2023, using an open application platform (OAP) on the website of the Mitigation Action Facility.
With that, I will give a word to Minh. And thank you all for joining us.

Minh: Thanks, Nina. Hello everyone. A warm welcome from my side as well. Now also for your very informative instruction and detailed information regarding the new Call of this year, together with the concept phase, which is newly introduced to the Mitigation Action Facility from this Call.

I’m going to share with you this very important document that Nina just mentioned. It is the General Information Document, the so-called GID. It is the very central source of information for the Call for Projects 2023.
It aims to assist the applicants in preparing and submitting the Project Concept to the Mitigation Action Facility and developing the Outline and the Proposal afterwards, which are more elaborated, of course, than the Project Concept. It also describes the project cycles in very detail and step by step with all the key stakeholders that could be involved in the process. And we also would like to provide further information regarding the assessment process. Also, the assessment criteria are found in this document. As you can see, the current version is in English, but it will soon be translated into French and Spanish because we would like to reach out to as many people as possible. So, I hope that is also useful for you.

Please note that the presentation and recording of this webinar will be published on our website in the coming days. And therefore, we encourage you to download this document via our website. We also put the link to this document in this slide. So, once you have the PowerPoint presentation on our website, you can download it.
And if we go over to the next slide, you can see that we have a lot of information and resources on our website. This has a handful of information besides the document that Nina and I mentioned before. And I hope that all will be useful and helpful for you.

The fact is that we can only cover some of the details in this webinar. So, we recommend you check the available resources on our website because we have many publications and knowledge products that provide you with more insights and also more details on the key topics, for example, all the projects criteria like the potential for transformation change, financial mechanisms, the potential for reducing greenhouse gas emission, gender and also the answers to the frequently asked questions.

And with this, we have covered most of the key topics for today’s webinar. Now it’s time for us to go to the Q&A session, and I saw that you have put many exciting questions in the Q&A box. So, my colleagues are very kind to check through all our questions in the Q&A box, and we will pick up some of them to be responded to. Thanks for that.
We have prepared the frequently asked questions we received in the previous Calls, and we hope that our answer will be helpful for you and the other questions. We will try our best to respond to it in the next upcoming webinar, which takes place on 17 May. If not, it will be covered under the clarification notes, which also will be published on our website soon.
So please stay tuned and follow our website regularly for the most updated information from us, and we would like to encourage you to subscribe also to our newsletter for such a purpose. Another small reminder I would like to highlight is that please take some minutes to complete our survey.

My colleague Tanisha posted it in the Q&A box at the beginning of the webinar. So please take some minutes to do that, and it’s helpful for us and thanks again for that. Now with the FAQ, I would like to give the word to my colleague Tanisha to start with our first question.

Tanisha: Thank you, Minh. I will read out some of the most common questions we receive. So, one of the most frequent questions we received is: Is there an option to receive the Mitigation Action Facility’s feedback on a Project Concept before officially submitting it?

Minh: No, this is not possible. In line with the Mitigation Action Facility’s policies, the TSU does not provide individual advice on Project Concepts to ensure transparent and fair competition among all Applicants.

Tanisha: As many NDCs include adaptation activities: Can a project also include adaptation activities, or is the focus mainly on mitigation?

Minh: The Mitigation Action Facility focuses on supporting the implementation of ambitious mitigation actions. We are looking for projects that can potentially trigger a transformational change towards carbon-neutral development pathways. While adaptation activities might be included to achieve the overall project outcome, the project should focus on mitigation activities.

Tanisha: If we want to resubmit a Project Outline developed for previous Calls, do we need to participate in the Project Concept Phase?

Minh: Yes, the Project Concept Phase is mandatory. If you have a Project Outline ready, you must submit a Project Concept via OAP and wait for the assessment and selection results.
If the Project Concept is selected to proceed into the Project Outline Phase, you will be invited to submit a Project Outline including the required Annexes.

Tanisha: What are examples of novel technologies that projects could pilot?
Minh: There is a substantial number of novel technologies that could be piloted as part of a project. Some illustrative examples are grid-scale battery storage, low-emission steel and cement, hydrogen production and application, or ocean renewable energy.

Tanisha: Can a country submit more than one Project Concept in the Call for Projects 2023?

Minh: Yes, this is possible. Each Project Concept is assessed on its own merits based on the same selection criteria, regardless of whether it comes from the same or different countries.

Tanisha: Minh, that concludes the questions that we had most frequently received, and the ones that we have received from the Q&A now, as mentioned earlier will be clarified via our clarification notes on our website. Yeah, back to you, Minh.

Minh: Thank you, Tanisha. So, we are almost at the end of the webinar.

So now it is time for us to briefly look at what’s next. You can see here our upcoming webinar on 17 May, where we will dive deeply into the technical aspects of the Project Concept submission using the open application platform (OAP). You are all welcome to participate in this webinar.
You will find this presentation and the recording of this webinar on our website in the next few days. And of course, in case you have any further questions or please feel free to reach out to our email address, contact@mitigation-action.org

And finally, I know that Nina mentioned this several times. Still, I also would like to emphasise again that if you are interested in submitting a Project Concept to us, please keep in mind that the deadline will be 31 July 2023, 3:00 PM CEST. And with this, on behalf of the team, I would like to wrap up the webinar today and thank you again for participating.
I would also like to thank my colleagues, Radina, Nina, and Tanisha, for joining me today to prepare this webinar. I wish you all a great day, and see you next time. Thank you, and goodbye.