R&D policy in the field of energy is directly insistent upon political framework conditions of the energy policy, which itself is substantiated by its goal-setting towards sufficiently warranted supply, environmental sustainability as well as cost efficiency. Research and development contributes therein and beyond by pushing the competitive limits of German High-Technology and strengthening its position in the global economy. Point of departure for R&D policies pursued to date in the field of energy have been the R&D focal issues set forth by the co-operation of political actors and the representatives of industry and science. The programmatic issues thus elected were customarily applied in terms of energy research programmes. Based on considerations for their continuous development, certain issues may be identified throughout several research programmes as for one the temporal progression and the success of R&D cannot usually be forecasted and, for another, owing in part to the long-term outset of scientific investigation. In many cases this procedure of defining and promoting set goals was, through the R&D funds applied, realised to its full potential by enabling technology spurts and/or breakthroughs. In some cases, however, the envisaged results did not come to pass, or at least not to a sufficient degree, despite amply supplied funds. This has to take into consideration that the terms of exposure of R&D funding are immanently borne with risk as neither outcome nor processes involved in research and development tasks are, in fact, a matter of predictable detail or planning. Acknowledging overall scarcity of financial resources, it may well be desirable to manage the funds made available to R&D more efficiently. The question at hand is therefore whether and how the traditional practice of R&D funds handling and, respectively, identification of central R&D tasks can be improved to an optimum. This made up the contribution of the EDUARD project. The goal was to increase the probability for successful use of R&D funds. Departing from existing R&D funding procedures and the insights in this setting over the course of many years, concepts and explanatory patterns yielded from empirical data were demonstrated. In addition, a criterion check list was compiled based on the available data and used for evaluation and identification of funding priorities. The concepts and criteria drawn from to derive a check list was applied to particular technologies in a second phase of the project.