Pre-announcement: Accelerating the Green Economy Centres

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Pre-announcement: Accelerating the Green Economy Centres – UKRI

Aim

The Accelerating the Green Economy Centres programme will fund innovative Centres that underpin emerging green markets in the UK. The Centres will bring together research clusters with business, local stakeholders and partners to co-develop and co-deliver research focused on market informed grand challenges to accelerate the exploitation and commercialisation of green solutions in a way that brings benefits to geographies across the UK.

The Centres should aim to drive the translation of fundamental research through to development and deployment of emerging green solutions by attracting private investment, creating business opportunities and driving economic activity. The Centres should be based in the most appropriate location in the UK for the challenge identified. Centres should demonstrate how they will establish and maintain world leading research, translation, and commercialisation activities, to grow and strengthen the flow of private capital investment, thereby accelerating the local and national green economy.

Scope

We are seeking to fund up to five pioneering, collaborative, challenge-led, co-designed Accelerating the Green Economy Centres to support the creation of green solutions to market-informed grand challenges. You must demonstrate meaningful engagement, collaboration and integration with key partners which could include businesses, investors, civic bodies, potential customers and other researchers. The partners will be appropriate to the challenge, target location and build a critical mass of capacity and capability within the emerging green market identified. We expect the leadership and governance of the Centre to reflect the partnership required to develop and deliver solutions to the challenge being addressed in the target location.

Accelerating the Green Economy Centres will:

• attract private investment to be deployed effectively in clean, green solutions as emerging markets mature
• cluster the local capabilities of towns, cities, rural economies and regions to enhance success
• accelerate the exploitation and commercialisation of new knowledge, innovations or solutions through co-investment and partnerships
• tackle specific, emerging industry-led research and innovation priorities to support the scale up and adoption of green economy solutions​
• test and deploy green economy solutions and technologies in geographies across the UK​

Accelerating the Green Economy Centres should:

• be co-created and co-delivered between academia, business and critical stakeholder organisations for example, local Government, in response to emerging sector opportunities where the UK can build strategic advantage
• build upon established research-based collaborations across academia, business, policymakers and the third sector
• undertake collaborative research projects, proof of concept studies and market development activities with business, working on sector informed challenges, facilitating technology transfer and knowledge exchange among participants
• be focused on market creation activities that build on the needs and capabilities of a defined location in the UK, the policy and standards requirements, and the investment criteria of private investors
• be transdisciplinary in nature, collaborating across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries, taking a solutions-focused approach to the opportunity
• support companies and small and medium enterprises (SME) developing new products, services and business models based on fundamental research and development activities to enable translation through to higher Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), including the creation of prototypes and operational demonstrators
• increase the level of industrial and commercial investment in research and development (R&D) activities with existing UK based companies, attract foreign direct investments in corporate R&D laboratories and leverage funding from alternative sources
• partner with local and national governments to anchor private investment in locations across the UK

To ensure that research outcomes can be fully exploited by industry, UKRI expects to see clear evidence of genuine, substantive partnerships, including co-creation and co-delivery with business in the development of new products, services, and business models.

It is anticipated that leveraged funding (including in-kind) of at least 25% to every £1 of UKRI funding at application stage will be required. You should demonstrate a plan to reach 100% match funding over the lifetime of the grant, along with plans for future self-sufficiency of the centre.

Full details here: Pre-announcement: Accelerating the Green Economy Centres – UKRI