The AENEAM project aims to accelerate the transition of the European agri-food industry towards a sustainable growth model. This objective is pursued by increasing the adoption of measures recommended by energy audits, encouraging companies (particularly NACE C10 -Food industries and C11 – Beverage industry) to undergo energy audits and implement their results, while also promoting digital solutions.
Recent European surveys confirm the urgency and relevance of this goal. The 2023 Eurochambres/SMEunited report (Access to sustainable finance for SMEs: a European Survey) indicates that while nearly 60% of SMEs are actively investing in their sustainable transition, a significant financing gap persists. One of the significant barriers for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is accessing adequate financing to cover the necessary upfront investments for energy efficiency (EE) measures and overcoming obstacles such as the lack of similar projects for comparing expected savings or unclear metrics for analyzing performance. The survey underlines this challenge, revealing that only 35% of these SME sustainability investments utilize external funding, a level considered insufficient for the required transformation, and a mere 16% of this finance is formally classified as ‘sustainable’. Often, this ‘sustainability’ is defined by the criteria of grant and subsidy programmes rather than dedicated, SME-friendly sustainable finance instruments.
This challenging landscape, highlighted also by the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance (PSF), which notes the perceived difficulty for SMEs in using complex frameworks like the EU Taxonomy, underscores the need for tailored support. Indeed, the PSF itself is proposing a dedicated ‘SME sustainable finance standard’ precisely to streamline access to transition finance for smaller businesses, acknowledging that current approaches often fail to meet SME needs.
This report documents the activities carried out within the project to address this challenge, in line with the general objectives of the AENEAM project. Below, you’ll find the database of financing opportunities for energy transition and sustainability projects available for Italy, Poland, Spain, France, and across all EU countries (available as of October 2025), as well as the accompanying guidance report.