Innovate UK: Funding Call to Accelerate the Shift to a Net Zero Economy (UK)

Deadline: 22-Mar-23

Innovate UK is pleased to launch its Funding Competition to accelerate the shift to a net zero economy.

Scope

• The focus is on reducing the cost and time required for assessing the fabric performance of buildings and assuring net zero performance targets are achieved.
• Understanding the fabric performance of a building before and after any building upgrade improvement measures are installed provides confidence in those measures.
• Building upgrade measures mean improvements to building fabric, heating, power and ventilation systems along with other heat demand reduction solutions. Many of the most established techniques for assessing and testing building fabric performance are largely based on standardised conditions. These tests can require significant preparation, are costly and can take a long time to carry out.
• Providing robust information on potential heat reduction is vital to increase assurance of building performance. It is this information that builds market confidence and leads to certainty of finance and ultimately faster uptake of measures.
• Your project must be applicable to real world measuring requirements for assessing fabric performance in buildings. By real world they mean outside of pure research or academic exercises.
• Your solutions must demonstrate the following:
  • transparency of methodology and any uncertainty in accuracy
  • providing robust verifiable data, including error margins, to inform building fabric upgrade decision making
  • assurance in achieving performance targets of any net zero renovation or construction measures related to thermal performance that have been invested in
  • replicability throughout the renovation and construction phase
  • delivery cost to ensure widespread adoption
• Applicable buildings can be:
  • existing buildings undergoing renovation where assessments are carried out before, during and after measures are installed as a minimum
  • new buildings where assessments are carried out at appropriate times on construction and on building completion as a minimum
• Examples of new or improved testing techniques include, but are not limited to:
  • solutions that provide an understanding of fabric performance under a range of conditions rather than imposed standardised conditions
  • solutions for construction types where existing tests are less appropriate for example high-rise buildings and varied or complex construction types and typologies
  • solutions that can robustly flex existing testing parameters such as seasonality of testing, testing only in vacant properties, requirement to test adjoining properties, duration of tests
  • solutions that address fabric performance, including heat transfer and air leakage properties of the building envelope
  • solutions that are designed to assist with the easy understanding of heat performance and lead to greater trust in the appropriateness of heat reduction improvement measures being installed
  • development of approaches that provide greater assurances to providers of finance packages
  • existing buildings undergoing renovation where assessments are carried out before and after measures are installed as a minimum
  • new buildings where assessments are carried out at appropriate times on construction and on building completion as a minimum.
• The key outcome of this competition is to make real world tests widespread and repeatable.

Specific Themes

• Your project must include:
  • existing residential or non-residential buildings undergoing deep renovation.
  • demonstrations of solutions on representative buildings or environments.
  • assessments undertaken without the need for occupant interaction so contractual obligations on the renovation or building activity can be discharged.
  • verifiable outcomes that adhere to commonly used metrics relating to heat performance in buildings
• Your project can also include one or more of the following:
  • new residential or non-residential buildings under construction.
  • assessments of heat performance using metering data, physical testing or analytics involving artificial intelligence and machine learning.
  • innovations to existing approaches that so that they can be conducted under a range of, rather than standardised, conditions.
  • end user involvement to ascertain improvements to new or existing techniques.
  • standards and certification body involvement to ensure verification and validation of solutions

Funding Information

• Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £100,000 and £250,000.
• Your project must:
  • start by 01 August 2023
  • end by 31 March 2025
  • last between 9 and 20 months
  • carry out all of its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.
• If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.

Projects they will not Fund

• They are not funding projects that:
  • do not focus on the performance of the fabric, for example solutions that focus on heating optimisation or air quality
  • address heat demand reduction through ventilation systems
  • focus on heating systems and system assessment
  • require long-term monitoring solutions and occupant behaviour data to inform outcomes
  • investigate the performance of low and zero carbon technologies or systems that reduce heating demand
• They cannot fund projects that are:
  • dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Eligibility Criteria

• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project or work alone your organisation must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size, a research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation
    • be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
  • If the lead organisation is a large business or an RTO, charity, not for profit or public sector organisation it must collaborate with at least one grant claiming SME.
  • Academic institutions cannot lead an application.
• 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)
  • Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.
  • To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
• Non-funded partners
  • Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses.
• 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.
  • You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
  • You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. They will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
  • All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
• Number of applications
  • A business, charity, not for profit or public sector organisation can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications. If a business, charity, not for profit or public sector organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in up to 3 applications.
  • An RTO can lead one application and can collaborate on any number of applications.
  • An academic organisation can collaborate on any number of applications.
• Previous applications
  • You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.
  • They will not award you funding if you have:
    • failed to exploit a previously funded project
    • an overdue independent accountant’s report
    • failed to comply with grant terms and conditions

For more information, visit Innovate UK.