The Hydrogen Innovation Scheme is a £10 million capital funding stream, designed to support the development and demonstration of renewable hydrogen technologies and products needed to support the Scottish Government’s ambition of 5GW installed hydrogen production capacity by 2030.
TechX’s Clean Energy Accelerator is an intensive 15-week programme for 12 innovative clean energy start-ups with clear potential to significantly accelerate the transition to an affordable net zero energy industry.
Start-ups’ technology solutions must be at a technology readiness level (TRL) of 2 to 6 inclusive in order to be eligible for the Accelerator. We will accept applications from start-ups that have developed other technologies at higher TRLs as long as the innovation they are applying with is TRL 2 to TRL 6.
Start-ups can be based anywhere as the programme is delivered virtually, but all participants must work to a GMT time zone. In-person attendance in Aberdeen UK is expected for 3 weeks (first week, last week and a week in the middle).
Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will work with the Department for Transport to invest up to £140 million in innovation projects. As part of the Zero Emission Road Freight (ZERFT) Demonstration programme, this competition will focus on the largest heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). The programme will support government’s commitment to end sales of all new, non-zero emission HGVs by 2040 and enable continued cross border freight.
The Zero Emission Road Freight programme competition is funding demonstrations across 3 strands:
Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation, is offering up to 50 Women in Innovation Awards to women entrepreneurs across the UK. The winners will receive a £50,000 grant and a bespoke package of mentoring, coaching and business support.
The aim of this competition is to find women with exciting, innovative ideas and ambitious plans that will inspire others. The awards are for women founders, co-founders or senior decision makers working in businesses that have been operating for at least one year.
The Automotive Transformation Fund (ATF) is an Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) programme that aims to establish a competitive and sustainable UK supply chain.
It offers a share of up to £1 billion of funding for capital and associated industrial research projects. This will be to support the industrialisation of a high value, electrified automotive supply at scale in the UK.
This is an expression of interest (EoI) competition, which is the first stage in a two stage process. Your EoI application outlines your proposal and potential benefits to the UK. If your application is successful, you will be invited to progress to a full application for the ATF competition.
Smart is Innovate UK’s responsive grant funding programme. It has focused eligibility criteria and scope to support SMEs and their partners to develop disruptive innovations with significant potential for rapid, economic return to the UK.
Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, is investing up to £25 million in the best game-changing, and world leading ideas, designed for swift, successful commercialisation. Ideas need to be genuinely new and novel, not just disruptive within their sector.
Your proposal must be business focused, with deliverable, realistic, adequately resourced plans to achieve return on investment, growth and market share following project completion.
The Food Challenge Partnership in the Cardiff Capital Region is looking for your innovative solutions to help address the issues of:
We are interested in sustainable food production and supply chain solutions which can be applied to the public sector, private and third sector to maximise commercial opportunities.
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), will invest up to £11million in innovation projects.
This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme which is delivered in partnership with UKRI’s Transforming Food Production Challenge. (Note: Being accepted in round 1 is not a requirement to apply for this grant).
Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, is working with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to invest up to £1.5 million across 3 years in grant funding for innovation projects that can improve the observation capabilities of the UK’s waters, towards improved assessment and evaluation of the status and risks to natural capital assets. These can include the data acquisition, communication, storage, analysis and modelling systems.
Innovate UK is offering up to £25 million in loans to micro, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Loans are for highly innovative late stage research and development (R&D) projects with the best potential for the future. There should be a clear route to commercialisation and economic impact.
Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £2.5 million from the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Programme for early-stage and mid- stage projects.
This funding is from the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge which aims to establish the UK as a leading innovator in smart and sustainable plastic packaging for consumer products. Its goals are to deliver cleaner growth across the supply chain, with a dramatic reduction in plastic waste entering the environment by 2025.
The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) programme allows a UK registered business or not for profit organisation (which we will refer to collectively as the ‘business partner’ from now on) to partner with a knowledge base partner’ (either a UK higher education (HE) or further education (FE) institution, research and technology organisation (RTO) or Catapult).
The aims of this competition are to:
Your project must focus on and address at least one of these areas:
Your project must focus on and address at least one of the following themes:
The Industrial Fuel Switching (IFS) Competition aims to support the development of fuel switching and fuel switch enabling technologies for UK industry. This includes fuel switches from high carbon fuels to hydrogen, electricity, biomass, and other low carbon fuels. It supports fuel switch and fuel switch enabling technologies at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 to 7 at the start of the project. It supports fuel switch and fuel switch enabling technologies at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 to 7 at the start of the project.
Funding is divided into 3 lots:
Scottish Enterprise and Transport Scotland have developed ZEMIF to support Scottish based businesses to scale the manufacture of prototype zero emission niche and HDV components, systems and vehicles through R&D activities.
The fund will encourage collaboration and clustering of innovation activity as projects move towards low-volume manufacturing. Successful project outcomes will be commercialised to fuel the decarbonisation of niche and HDVs in Scotland and across the globe.
The fund has two main strands. These are:
Strand 2 (this strand): Manufacturing process development, which aims to fund innovative process development projects that impact manufacturing cost, capability and efficiency to grow resilient manufacturing PEMD supply chains.
Strand 1 (this strand): Adopting manufacturing best practice, which aims to fund feasibility studies that facilitate the transfer of knowledge, solutions, technologies and best practice from other manufacturing sectors and demonstrate the impact of these innovations on the PEMD supply chain.
Phase 2 of the IETF provides grant funding for feasibility and engineering studies, and for the deployment of industrial energy efficiency and deep decarbonisation projects.
IETF Phase 2: Autumn 2022 provides approximately £70 million of grant funding for the following project types:
Scotland’s CO2 utilisation sector is new and emerging. The aim of this challenge is to support Research and Development (R&D) to assist companies in developing technology that will lead to new commercial uses for CO2, and the creation of jobs, as part of our journey to a low carbon economy.
Run by Scottish Enterprise on behalf of Scottish Government, the funding is being provided as part of its Programme for Government 2020/21 commitments.
Suitable projects may use chemical, biological reactions or mineralisation to transform CO2 into a product or component with commercial value. Projects that focus on products and processes with low carbon intensity will be prioritised.
The challenge will support projects to develop and test products and to enable infrastructure developments at emissions sources for use in your project. However, projects with a strong focus on carbon capture technology are out of scope, as are projects which do not involve CO2 transformation – using CO2 as a solvent or working fluid, for example.