Funding competition Clean Growth Innovation Fund: round 1

This is an invitation-only programme for UK businesses to apply for a share of up to £4 million for innovative projects. Successful applicants will receive a combination of grant and investment to cover project costs.

This competition is now closed.

Start new application

Competition sections

Description

ENGIE will work with Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, to invest up to £4 million. This is for innovative projects that can speed up the development of solutions to decarbonise, digitise and decentralise energy to help achieve a sustainable energy transition.

To be successful, your project must be independently assessed by Innovate UK as fundable. The required match funding must be available to the applicant from ENGIE.

The competition’s aim is to allow organisations to form investment partnerships at an early stage. To do this, ENGIE and Innovate UK are bringing together:

  • Innovate UK’s expertise in identifying promising innovations and using funding to materially change their risk profiles
  • ENGIE’s expertise in identifying commercial and customer focused opportunities from the results-driven management teams that are most likely to grow and make the best use of extra investment finance

The competition closes at midday 12pm UK time on the deadline stated.

Funding type

Grant

Project size

Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £100,000 and £1.2 million. We may consider funding one project over the life of the programme of £1.5 million.

Who can apply

State aid

Any UK business claiming funding must be eligible to receive state aid at the time we confirm you will be awarded funding. If you are unsure please take legal advice. For further information see our general guidance.

Your project

Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £100,000 and £1.2 million. We may consider funding one project £1.5 million over the life of the programme.

Projects must have started no later than 1 March 2021 and be completed by 30 June 2023. We would expect most projects to last between 6 months and 2 years.

If your project’s total eligible costs or duration fall outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@innovateuk.ukri.org at least 10 days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.

Lead applicant

To be eligible for funding you must:

You must be registered as a UK SME by the time the award is contracted.

Collaborations are not eligible for this competition; however, subcontractors are allowed.

Each organisation can only submit one application into this round of this competition.

Previous applications

Resubmissions

If you submit a new proposal in this round and are unsuccessful in the application process, you will be able to use it in no more than one future competition that allows resubmissions.

Failure to exploit

If you applied to a previous competition as the lead or sole organisation and were awarded funding by Innovate UK or UK Research and Innovation, but did not make a substantial effort to exploit that award, we will award no more funding to you, in this or any other competition. You will not be able to contest our decision. We will:

  • assess your efforts in the previous competition against your exploitation plan for that project
  • review the monitoring officers’ reports and any other relevant sources for evidence
  • document our decision, which will be made by 3 team members, and communicate it to you in writing

Previous projects

Under the terms of Innovate UK funding, you are required to submit an independent accountant’s report (IAR) with your final claim. If you or any organisation in your consortium failed to submit an IAR on a previous project, we will not award funding to you in this or any other competition until we have received the documents.

Funding

ENGIE and Innovate UK have together allocated up to £4 million to fund innovation projects through this invitation-only programme.

Successful applicants will receive a combination of grant from Innovate UK and investment from ENGIE. Innovate UK will fund up to 50% of eligible project costs that can be used for a feasibility study or an industrial research project.

This programme does not accept experimental development projects.

This competition provides state aid funding under article 25, ‘Aid for research and development projects’, of the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER). It is your responsibility to make sure that your organisation is eligible to receive state aid.

Your proposal

The aim of this competition is to fund innovative projects that can speed up the development of solutions to decarbonise, digitise and decentralise energy to help achieve a sustainable energy transition.

To meet the grant and investment criteria, your proposal must include one or more of the following:

  • a new technology or business model which develops distributed energy, green gas, e-mobility, energy efficiency, renewables, community energy, digitisation, energy services, sustainable development or system decarbonisation
  • a technology-enabled innovation which encourages positive consumer behaviour and business actions at scale to improve the usage of energy
  • or a new scientific and technological improvement in the energy, sustainability and ‘cleantech’ space

We are looking to fund a portfolio of projects, across a variety of technologies, markets, technological maturities and research categories.

Research categories

We will fund feasibility projects and industrial research projects, as defined in the general guidance.

Projects we will not fund

We are not funding:

  • projects that have not been invited to take part by ENGIE
  • collaborative projects
  • projects undertaken by large companies or academic institutions
  • experimental development projects

10 June 2019
Competition opens
14 August 2019 12:00pm
Competition closes
20 September 2019 4:25pm
Applicants notified

Before you start

You must read the general guidance for applicants before you start. The general guidance provides useful information for you to understand what the requirements are and how to submit a quality application.

What we will ask you

The application is split into 3 sections:

  1. Project details.
  2. Application questions.
  3. Finances.

1. Project details

This section provides background for the assessors and is not scored.

Application details

The lead applicant must complete this section. Give your project’s title, start date and duration.

Research category

Select the type of research you will undertake.

Project summary

Describe your project briefly, and be clear about what makes it innovative. We use this section to assign experts to assess your application.

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

Public description

Describe your project in detail, and in a way that you are happy to see published. Do not include any commercially sensitive information. If we award your project funding, we will publish this description. This could happen before you start your project.

Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

Scope

Describe how your project fits the scope of the competition. If your project is not in scope it will be immediately rejected and will not be sent for assessment. We will give you feedback on why. Your answer can be up to 400 words long.

2. Application questions

The assessors will score your answers. You will receive feedback from them for each one.

Your answer to each question can be up to 400 words long. Do not include any URLs in your answers.

Question 1. Need or challenge

What is the business need, technological challenge or market opportunity behind your innovation?

Describe or explain:

  • the main motivation for the project
  • the business need, technological challenge or market opportunity
  • the nearest current state-of-the-art, including those near market or in development, and its limitations
  • any work you have already done to respond to this need, for example if the project focuses on developing an existing capability or building a new one
  • the wider economic, social, environmental, cultural or political challenges which are influential in creating the opportunity, such as incoming regulations, using our Horizons tool if appropriate

Question 2. Approach and innovation

What approach will you take and where will the focus of the innovation be?

Describe or explain:

  • how you will respond to the need, challenge or opportunity identified
  • how you will improve on the nearest current state-of-the-art identified
  • whether the innovation will focus on the application of existing technologies in new areas, the development of new technologies for existing areas or a totally disruptive approach
  • the freedom you have to operate
  • how this project fits with your current product, service lines or offerings
  • how it will make you more competitive
  • the nature of the outputs you expect from the project (for example report, demonstrator, know-how, new process, product or service design) and how these will help you to target the need, challenge or opportunity identified

You can submit one appendix to support your answer. It must be a PDF and can be up to 2 pages long. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

Question 3. Team and resources

Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Describe or explain:

  • the roles, skills and experience of all members of the project team that are relevant to the approach you will be taking
  • the resources, equipment and facilities needed for the project and how you will access them
  • the details of any vital external parties, including sub-contractors, who you will need to work with to successfully carry out the project
  • any roles you will need to recruit for

You can submit one appendix to support your answer. It must be a PDF and can be up to 4 pages long. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

Question 4. Market awareness

What does the market you are targeting look like?

Describe or explain:

  • the markets (domestic, international or both) you will be targeting in the project and any other potential markets
  • the size of the target markets for the project outcomes, backed up by references where available
  • the structure and dynamics of the target markets, including customer segmentation, together with predicted growth rates within clear timeframes
  • the target markets’ main supply or value chains and business models, and any barriers to entry that exist
  • the current UK position in targeting these markets
  • the size and main features of any other markets not already listed

If your project is highly innovative, where the market may be unexplored, describe or explain:

  • what the market’s size might to be
  • how your project will try to explore the market’s potential

Question 5. Outcomes and route to market

How are you going to grow your business and increase your productivity into the long term as a result of the project?

Describe or explain:

  • your current position in the markets and supply or value chains outlined, and whether you will be extending or establishing your market position
  • your target customers or end users, and the value to them, for example why they would use or buy your product
  • your route to market
  • how you are going to profit from the innovation, including increased revenues or cost reduction
  • how the innovation will affect your productivity and growth, in both the short and the long term
  • how you will protect and exploit the outputs of the project, for example through know-how, patenting, designs or changes to your business model
  • your strategy for targeting the other markets you have identified during or after the project

If there is any research organisation activity in the project, describe:

  • your plans to spread the project’s research outputs over a reasonable timescale
  • how you expect to use the results generated from the project in further research activities

Question 6. Wider impacts

What impact might this project have outside the project?

Describe, and where possible measure:

  • the economic benefits from the project to external parties, including customers, others in the supply chain, broader industry and the UK economy, such as productivity increases and import substitution
  • any expected impact on government priorities
  • any expected environmental impacts, either positive or negative and how these could affect ENGIE and its customers
  • the role that your solution would have in the UK’s transition to net zero carbon and in supporting ENGIE’s customers in achieving this goal
  • any expected regional impacts of the project

Describe any expected social impacts, either positive or negative on, for example:

  • quality of life
  • social inclusion or exclusion
  • jobs, such as safeguarding, creating, changing or displacing them
  • education
  • public empowerment
  • health and safety
  • regulations
  • diversity

Question 7. Project management

How will you manage the project effectively?

Describe or explain:

  • the main work packages of the project and the total cost of each one
  • your approach to project management, identifying any major tools and mechanisms you will use to get a successful and innovative project outcome
  • the management reporting lines
  • your project plan in enough detail to identify any links or dependencies between work packages or milestones

You should submit a project plan or Gantt chart as an appendix to support your answer. It must be a PDF and can be up to 2 pages long. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

Question 8. Risks

What are the main risks for this project?

Describe or explain:

  • the main risks and uncertainties of the project, including the technical, commercial, managerial and environmental risks, providing a risk register if appropriate
  • how you will mitigate these risks
  • any project inputs that are critical to completion, such as resources, expertise, data sets
  • any output likely to be subject to regulatory requirements, certification, ethical issues and so on, and how you will manage this

You should submit a risk register as an appendix to support your answer. It must be a PDF and can be up to 2 pages long. The font must be legible at 100% zoom.

Question 9. Added value

What impact would an injection of public funding and private investment have on the businesses involved?

Describe or explain:

  • if this project could go ahead in any form without public funding and/or private investment and if so, the difference the public funding and private investment would make, such as a faster route to market, more partners or reduced risk
  • how you see your relationship with ENGIE developing and what you are looking for, beyond potential investment, from ENGIE
  • how working with ENGIE will provide mutual benefit and the likely impact to your organisation, ENGIE and its customers
  • why you are not able to wholly fund the project from your own resources or other forms of private-sector funding, and what would happen if the application is unsuccessful
  • how this project would change the nature of R&D activity you would undertake, and the related spend

Question 10. Costs and value for money

How much will the project cost and how does it represent value for money for the team and the taxpayer?

Describe or explain:

  • the total project cost and the grant you are requesting in terms of the project goals
  • how this project represents value for money for you and the taxpayer
  • any sub-contractor costs and why they are critical to the project

3. Finances

You must complete your own project costs, organisational details and funding details. For full details on what costs you can claim please see our project costs guidance.

Background and further information

If you need more information, email us at support@innovateuk.ukri.org or call the competition helpline on 0300 321 4357 between 9am and 5:30pm, Monday to Friday.

Need help with this service? Contact us