Funding Competition: Local Industrial Decarbonisation Plans (UK)

Deadline: 2-Aug-23

UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £5 million to develop strategic plans for place-based industrial decarbonisation.

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will work with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) to invest up to £5 million in place-based industrial decarbonisation plans.

The Local Industrial Decarbonisation Plans Competition (LIDP) provides support for industrial manufacturers, not located within the UK’s existing industrial clusters, to develop plans to reduce their emissions and avoid carbon leakage.

The competitive grant funding will support the advancement of place-based industrial decarbonisation plans. This will involve collaboration between closely located industrial businesses and other stakeholders, as well as upskilling their capabilities ahead of introducing low-emission technologies.

Objectives

• The objectives of this competition are as follows:
  • To support the development of credible, context-sensitive, strategic plans for decarbonising local industrial clusters
  • To increase organisational collaboration and strengthen decarbonisation planning skills, capacity and capability in local industrial clusters
  • To gather evidence to inform decarbonisation of other local industrial clusters and dispersed sites.

Aim

• The aim of this competition is to support the creation of credible industrial decarbonisation plans for local industrial clusters. Local clusters can be made up of groups of closely located, emitting industrial sites and other stakeholders. The funding is intended to increase collaboration between organisations, strengthen decarbonisation planning skills and enable development of organisational structures for place-based decarbonisation.

Specific Themes

• It is recognised that local industrial clusters will be at different stages of development but they would anticipate that your local cluster decarbonisation plan would include:
  • technology options
  • emissions data
  • commercial arrangements
  • stakeholders
  • funding and finance
  • knowledge dissemination, in the form of a dissemination plan demonstrating how learning from the project will be gathered and disseminated to other industrial clusters and dispersed sites
  • the economic, social and environmental impact of decarbonising the local cluster
  • existing decarbonisation activities
  • barriers and enablers
  • geographic coverage
  • timelines
  • exploitation plan

Funding Information and Duration

• Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £75,000 and £800,000.
• Have a minimum duration of 6 months.
• Your project must:
  • start by 1 January 2024
  • end by 31 December 2024

Eligible Projects

• Your proposal must:
  • demonstrate the regional and national significance of your project
  • demonstrate what networks, stakeholders and audiences will contribute to the project and what information will be disseminated through a dissemination plan
  • develop a strong understanding of emissions data and developing pathways to reach Net Zero by 2050
  • consider the wider cross-economy decarbonisation scenarios
  • capture existing activity in the cluster on industrial decarbonisation
  • identify the key industrial decarbonisation project options required to achieve carbon abatement in the local cluster, for example, common infrastructure and site-specific
  • identify barriers and enablers to industrial decarbonisation in the local cluster
  • analyse decarbonisation benefits and costs, including emissions, economic, environmental and social impact, and quantifying these where possible
  • identify key industrial decarbonisation stakeholders, plans for further engagement and future development of organisational structures designed to implement content of plan
  • demonstrate how the project will lead to decarbonisation of your local industrial cluster after the funding from this competition ends in March 2025
• It is the responsibility of applicants to get independent subsidy control and State aid legal advice.

Eligibility Criteria

• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project your organisation must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size, charity, not for profit, research and technology organisation (RTO) or public sector organisation
    • collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• Project team
  • To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • charity
    • not for profit
    • public sector organisation
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)
• Non-funded partners
  • Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
• Subcontractors
  • Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
  • Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
• Number of applications
  • A business, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation can lead on one application and can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.

Ineligibility Criteria

• They are not funding projects that are:
  • single industrial facilities
  • focused on deployment activities
  • pre-FEED (front end engineering design) or FEED studies
  • not primarily focused on industrial decarbonisation, however plans that are primarily focused on industry, but which can show synergies with decarbonisation of other sectors, for example, waste, power or transport, will be considered
  • considered to duplicate the scope of IDC Clusters, however plans that are not covered by the IDC clusters, but which can show how their plans will connect to the clusters, will be accepted.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.