The European Commission has adopted a Clean Energy Investment Strategy (COM/2026/116) targeting €660 billion per year in new investment until 2030, rising to €695 billion between 2031 and 2040. The European Investment Bank Group will commit over €75 billion in financing over the next three years — and small modular reactor research is explicitly listed as a funded category.
For SAF producers, that SMR line item is the headline. The strategy commits the Commission and EIB to support “the next generation of clean energy technologies,” naming “financing research on small modular nuclear reactors in Europe” among the funded areas. That language places nuclear-powered eSAF — the technology Equilibrion and Rolls-Royce SMR are developing under UK Department for Transport backing — within the EU’s investable framework for the first time.
“To ensure that Europe’s economy is powered by secure, affordable and clean energy, we have to step up the pace and scale of investments. Public financing alone is not enough. We must strategically leverage private capital.”
The broader de-risking logic matters just as much. A persistent barrier for advanced SAF facilities targeting the ReFuelEU 2030 eSAF mandate has been the gap between offtake agreement and final investment decision: institutional investors have been reluctant to back first-of-a-kind technology without public co-investment. The new strategy addresses this directly. Using the EIB as a co-investor, the Commission aims to spread financing costs over time and attract institutional capital that currently sits on the sidelines of SAF project finance.
Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jørgensen framed the strategy as a structural shift: “Public financing alone is not enough. We must strategically leverage private capital. With our Clean Energy Investment Strategy, backed by over €75 billion of financing by the European Investment Bank, we will de-risk projects and attract a broader range of investors to help finance clean technologies.” EIB Group President Nadia Calviño added that the investment targets “projects that lower bills for businesses and households, create jobs across industries and ensure Europe is leading the way into tomorrow’s world.”
The International Energy Agency estimates that roughly 35% of the emission reductions required by 2050 will depend on technologies not yet commercially available — a category that currently includes power-to-liquids SAF at scale. The strategy will also establish an Energy Transition Investment Council, to be convened by Commissioner Jørgensen later this year, with a mandate to align public policy with long-term investor requirements across emerging clean technologies.
The strategy does not name SAF directly. But for an industry where the eSAF mandate is on the books and the commercial supply is essentially zero, institutional de-risking at this scale is the architecture the sector has been asking for.
Source: European Commission DG Energy
