Impact in the evaluators' language

The most common reason strong clean-tech applications lose points on impact, and the fix.

The most common shortfall in clean-technology applications is a quiet confusion about what "impact" means to an evaluator. Applicants describe what their technology does: the efficiency gain, the emissions avoided in the pilot. Evaluators are scoring something different, impact against the programme's stated objectives, and specifically what would change if the technology spread at scale. The two are not the same, and the gap between them is where points are lost.

A solution that cuts energy use by a striking margin in a single installation can still score poorly if the application never connects that result to the call's objective: circularity, sector decarbonisation, strategic autonomy in critical materials. The evaluator is not asking "is this impressive?" They are asking "if this works, does it move the thing this programme exists to move?"

The fix is to write impact in the evaluators' language and quantify it in their terms. Not "our process is more efficient," but "at the adoption level this call targets, that efficiency translates into the outcome the programme is trying to buy." Your own numbers, never invented, always yours, mapped onto the programme's goals. The technology stays the same. The framing is what wins the points.

From our practice · Eucade