The research grant lasts three years for a total of 300,000 euros. The research project, entitled “The cleantech industry in the European Green Deal: policy challenges and the finance landscape for SMEs (CLEU)” is developed together with Politecnico di Torino (Project Coordinator), Politecnico di Milano and Università di Bologna. The research activity aims to aims to: i) analyse the actions that are undertaken by European cleantech firms to engage in transformative climate and innovation actions to align with the European Green Deal-inspired policies; ii) examine the association of the environmental innovation and the number of new investments made by venture capital (VC) investors in cleantech companies on environmental indicators; iii) analyse the enabling factors for the development of European cleantech firms, with a focus on EU-level and country-level targeted policies and regulations and the different sources of financing; iv) analyse the extent to which the implementation of policies and regulations affect both the propensity of cleantech firms to seek external equity financing and the equity offer by VC funds.