Company Requirements

To be able to apply for this financing line, your company must meet the following requirements

• Have a tax domicile in Spain.
• Be:
  • Companies with their own legal personality, of any size: micro, small, medium and large enterprises.
  • Individuals engaged in economic activity who offer goods and/or services on the market and are registered in the AEAT's Census of Business Owners, Professionals and Withholding Agents.
  • Universities and research and development centres with their own legal personality.
  • Consortia and business groups with their own legal personality.
  • The public sector as defined in Article 2 of Law 40/2015.
  • Energy service companies, as defined in Article 19 of Royal Decree-Law 6/2010: companies that carry out the investment at the client's premises and take on economic risk, because they are paid wholly or partly on the basis of the energy savings achieved. They must act under a valid energy services contract, with verifiable, measurable or estimable savings, and pass the aid on to the owner or operator of the facilities where the project is carried out.
• No sector restriction by CNAE: unlike the industrial subprogramme, this one is open to any sector operating refrigeration generation and cold storage facilities — food industry, cold-storage logistics, retail distribution, hospitality, agri-livestock, etc. The only sector exclusion is fishing and aquaculture.
• Company size determines the aid intensity (small: 50%, medium: 40%, large enterprises: 30%, generally speaking).
• Applicants without economic activity: may qualify for a maximum aid intensity of 70%, but must provide documentary evidence of this status.
• The following are not eligible to apply for this subprogram: homeowners' associations and third-sector entities (they are only eligible for the tertiary ZEB subprogramme).

Limits

The following limits apply to this financing line

• Only one application per beneficiary and location in this call. A company with several cold-storage sites may therefore file one project per site.
• Excluding technical requirements — failing any of these rules the project out:
  • The replaced refrigeration compressors must have a total installed electrical power of 100 kW or more.
  • The new installation's refrigerant must have a GWP below 150.
  • Final energy saving of more than 20 % on the existing installation or subsystem.
• Sector and technology exclusions: the fishing and aquaculture sectors; absorption and adsorption cooling generation; comfort air conditioning governed by the RITE; and refrigeration installations in air, sea and land transport.
• Photovoltaics are not an eligible cost. On-site PV generation changes the source of the electricity but does not reduce final consumption, so pairing the new refrigeration plant with a PV installation must be financed separately.
• Exclusionary assessment criteria: projects that do not meet the requirements of the governing rules, those that show no innovation, those consisting solely of studies and those scoring below 50 points out of 100 are ruled out.
• Incompatible with Energy Saving Certificates (CAE): an action funded from the National Energy Efficiency Fund cannot subsequently be used to apply for a CAE. This matters here, since replacing refrigeration equipment is one of the standardised CAE measures.
• This is not de minimis aid. It falls under Regulation (EU) 651/2014, so it does not use up the company's €300,000 de minimis ceiling. It is, however, subject to the maximum aid intensities in Article 38 of that Regulation (investment aid for energy efficiency measures other than in buildings). Applicable percentages:
  • Rest of the country: large company 30 %, medium 40 %, small 50 %.
  • Assisted areas under Article 107(3)(c) of the Treaty: large company 35 %, medium 45 %, small 55 %.
  • Assisted areas under Article 107(3)(a) of the Treaty: large company 45 %, medium 55 %, small 65 %.
  • Applicants without economic activity: 70 %, as set by the governing rules.
  • How the figures are built up: the baseline is 30 %, increased by 10 percentage points for medium-sized and 20 points for small enterprises, plus 5 points in assisted areas under Article 107(3)(c) and 15 points in those under Article 107(3)(a).
  • These intensities apply to the eligible cost after deducting the reference investment, not to the total project cost. The counterfactual here is normally replacing the plant with conventional compression equipment meeting only the minimum efficiency required by law.
  • If costs are determined without a counterfactual scenario and without a tender procedure, the intensities are halved.
  • The assisted-area uplift is calculated automatically by the application form once the municipality is entered. It can also be checked against the "Mapa de ayudas regionales" published on the programme's website (regional aid map for Spain 2022-2027, mid-term revision).