Aim
Major progress is still required to make sufficient advances in industrial emissions in the UK as identified by the Climate Change Committee (CCC). Through this funding opportunity we aim to drive a sustainable industrial future, shifting the UK away from environmentally detrimental industries and processes to more sustainable and circular alternatives that will enable wider environmental and socio-economic benefits.
This funding opportunity will focus on an existing critical mass of research to deliver a cross-sectoral systems approach, working closely with industry and policymakers to scale up, drive impact and translation and ensure the entire system delivers enhanced outcomes for society and the environment.
The objectives of this funding opportunity are to:
- support one virtual centre of excellence that enables greenhouse gas (GHG) -emitting UK incumbent manufacturing industries to shift towards sustainable operations with net zero/negative GHG emissions, enabling environmental net gain, economic and societal resilience, employment growth and resource & energy security
- advance the UK’s transition to net zero by building on the legacy of previous UKRI investments (such as the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge and Transforming Foundation Industries Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund programmes, as well as programmes such as National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research (NICER) Programme)
- deliver excellent, leading-edge engineering, physical and environmental sciences and transdisciplinary research
Scope
This funding opportunity will focus on enabling industry to deliver directly against the Sixth Carbon Budget by 2030. This centre’s research focus should be on reducing the whole lifecycle costs of the industrial-scale manufacturing processes. This will grow the UK research capability in how to achieve the following:
- scale up environmentally sustainable solutions and technologies (including the development and deployment of environmental monitoring, reporting and validation technologies) and ‘learn by doing’ through partnering with active demonstration and deployment programmes
- do this with a true ‘systems approach’ to the industrial scale manufacturing processes, where the interdependencies between decarbonisation, circular economy, resource & energy efficiency and environmental net gain are truly understood and optimised for the most sustainable and inclusive outcome possible
The outcomes of this investment will enable:
- manufacturing industries to shift their products, systems and services to clean alternatives, that benefit the wider environment, which in turn will lead to sustainable jobs and wealth creation in the industrial heartlands of our nations and regions
- security of UK supply of feedstocks, materials, fuels, and the creation of value from waste through greater circularity of resource streams in the UK (approaches for which could include industrial symbiosis and consideration of natural capital and ecosystem service provision)
- creation of new jobs, businesses, supply chains and industries that exploit (or leverage or build upon) UK research strengths and explicitly promote the responsible and sustainable use of (natural) resources
- influence on emission reductions and other environmental benefits including improved water and air quality; reduced pollution and enhanced natural capital
- ability to supply both UK needs and export sustainable solutions and products to the rest of the world
The virtual centre of excellence will:
- build a transdisciplinary, inclusive team covering the essential engineering, physical and environmental sciences, as well as other requisite areas, focused on a clear strategic vision
- create a critical mass centre to act as a focal point for industry, policymakers and the research community to share common challenges
- explore the interdisciplinary research questions which the UK engineering and physical sciences and environmental science communities can address in partnership
- deliver a co-created programme of research that directly advances the UK’s net zero transition and explicitly considers environmental net gain in partnership with industry
- include research and innovation Work Streams, examples of these could include but are not limited to partnering with demonstrator projects to extract learning from real-world demonstrations and pilots (industrial symbiosis etc) in an industrial cluster or exploration of value from waste in industrial setting, integration of CCS and Negative Emission Technologies (NETs) at a local or regional scale. Workstreams should cross at least two industries
- include Function Streams to integrate learning across the work streams, designed to deliver a specific function for the centre. This shall include the development of environmental, social and governance standards for decarbonisation of industrial-scale manufacturing processes, other examples of these could include, but are not limited to: policy, standards, cross cutting technologies, international, digital and data
- ensure connectivity and sharing of information between function streams and workstreams, with functions drawing on what is coming out of workstreams
- look at all aspects of sustainability rather than individual challenges such as decarbonisation and circularity in isolation
- represent and act as advocates for EPSRC/NERC where appropriate
- embed equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) within hub operations and activities by developing and delivering an EDI action plan, led by the hub EDI lead, which takes into account the specific EDI context and challenges within the hub’s research area and community
- deliver outputs such as:
- technologies, products, and processes to reduce our demand on fossil fuels, including resource & energy efficiency improvements, diversification and security of energy supply and defossilisation of feedstocks and sustainable use of natural resources (for example, available natural feedstocks)
- new, scalable, and commercially viable low and zero emission alternative technologies and (where appropriate) processes, as well as the deployment of existing technologies in novel ways
- solutions for the breadth of our energy intensive industries which are cross-industry with cross-sector impact that consider environmental benefits beyond decarbonisation
- synthesis and consolidation of current research to inform industry and policy in the near term including understanding of the wider environmental and socio-economic co-benefits, trade-offs and unintended consequences
- facilitation of ‘learning by doing’ by partnering with industry demonstrators, deployments and lessons learned cycles
In terms of GHG emissions and this funding opportunity, the main research and innovation focus should be on reduction of scope 1 and 2 emissions from industrial manufacturing processes, rather than scope 3, although subsequent reduction in the latter is of course welcome.
Sectors
For the purposes of this funding opportunity, ‘Industry’ refers to those UK incumbent manufacturing industries (as defined by the UK Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy (PDF, 7.4MB) which are:
- metals and minerals
- chemicals
- food and drink
- paper and pulp
- ceramics
- glass
- oil refineries
- less energy intensive manufacturing including the manufacturing of vehicles, wood products, pharmaceuticals and electronics, among other industries
Any research area or technology is in scope as long as it can be justified in how it will facilitate the outcomes articulated in this funding opportunity.
This investment should not solely focus on the discovery and development of individual technologies but on the integration and application of these technologies as a system to support the transition to more sustainable industrial processes and operations.
It is expected that this investment should collaborate with other major programmes that are focussed on technology discovery, development and environmental whole system understanding where appropriate (for example, hydrogen, nuclear fission, advanced manufacturing, sustainable resource use, climate & climate change, environmental economics).
Sustainability
Sustainability must be at the forefront of this programme. The United Nations Brundtland Commission (PDF, 4MB) defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The UKRI Sustainability Strategy states that Sustainability is the term used to bring together three broad areas: social (people), economic (prosperity) and environment (planet).
This funding opportunity aims to use a whole system approach to sustainability that will simultaneously provide co-benefits to people, planet and prosperity Potential co-benefits could include:
- better for people:
- more sustainable, meaningful job creation
- better, safer working conditions across the supply chain
- greater community inclusion, engagement and buy-in
- better for planet:
- improved air, land and water quality
- biodiversity restoration and enhanced ecosystem resilience
- responsible use of natural resources (for example, land, water, energy)
- reduced waste, enhanced recycling and valorisation of waste to reduce demand on natural resources
- environmental net gain
- better for prosperity:
- economic resilience and growth
- increased exports
- materials and supply chain security
- policies that provide business certainty within the market
- incentives for businesses to engage and transition to most sustainable outcomes possible
- regulatory framework for safer development of new solutions
- regional development
Systems approach
Systems approaches are frameworks or methodologies focused on understanding the whole system and exploring the interconnections within and between systems. This programme needs a systems approach where all solutions need to consider the full life cycle cost of the manufacturing process, impacts and unintended consequences of the change including how we maximise the in-service lifetime of current assets and infrastructure as well as considering wider system dependencies and limitations.
There are major benefits to taking a cross-industry systems approach enabling exploration of approaches such as industrial symbiosis and value creation that also consider wider impacts on the interlinked environmental system. A systems approach will facilitate co-benefits beyond GHG emission reductions to include enabling environmental net gain, social cohesion, economic growth and resource and energy security.
Interdisciplinarity
Although this programme must have the engineering, physical and environmental sciences research challenges of environmentally, socially and economically sustainable industrial futures as a core focus, we recognise that the scale of this challenge is complex and high-risk, requiring the integration of multiple stakeholders and broad interdisciplinary teams across and beyond the remit of EPSRC/NERC.
Industry engagement and co-creation
A key aspect required of the centre is true co-creation with industry from the outset, where stakeholders collaborate around emerging opportunities and quick wins in order to meet the needs of industry now as well as in the future.
To ensure that research outcomes can be exploited by industry, we are looking for clear evidence of genuine, substantive partnerships, with co-creation and co-delivery of projects and activities, as well as financial contributions. As well as this expectation for co-creation from the outset, the Centre should welcome new and additional industry engagement at any time throughout the lifetime of the investment and have a clear strategy and framework to support this.
The investment should explore ‘learning by doing’ as far as possible by collaborating with industry to see what works through partnering with demonstration and deployment programmes as far as possible.
There is no minimum leverage or number of partners required, but you must go beyond the standard letters of support to evidence true co-creation and engagement. This could include but is not limited to industry member time, expertise, data, use cases, secondments.
Letters of support will only be required for the full application stage.
In addition to industrial clusters and other industrial settings that provide a natural collaboration space, there will be investments in the landscape sitting alongside this that will complement the centre that we expect it to interact with. In addition to UKRI investments, the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) have programmes such as the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund.
Management and governance
The successful programme will be led by a director or co-directors with a strong track record of effectively leading large, complex investments and collaborating with users. It is essential that the centre has, at its heart, an interdisciplinary thought leadership team, that includes representatives of the research communities of both funders. This will provide oversight and leadership of the centre, as well as driving integration, engagement, horizon scanning, knowledge exchange and analysis to provide a ‘front door’ for engagement with industry and policymakers and drive thought leadership across the landscape.
The programme should implement a governance structure for decision making on flexible funding. Advice from UKRI should be sought post award to ensure good practice is followed in the assessment and allocation of flexible funds. Projects are expected to engage with the wider programme of activity and to report their progress and outcomes to the grant holder.
There will be a sufficiently resourced management unit to provide rigorous programme management for an impactful centre that can respond to the needs of a changing landscape.
In the governance procedures, advice from users must be appropriately used in the centre decision-making strategy to grow user engagement in terms of funding, numbers of users and to facilitate routes to impact.
The successful programme will have an independent steering committee which supports the centre in ascertaining the direction of travel that will provide maximum impact.
EPSRC and NERC representatives, who will be appointed by EPSRC and NERC, will sit on this steering committee. Equality, diversity and inclusion should be considered when setting up the governance structure of the research programme.
Reporting, monitoring and evaluation
You should ensure that monitoring and evaluation is well-considered from the outset to effectively track the centre’s contribution and impacts, including the ongoing engagement with industrial partners.
The successful programme will be required to report on the progress of the research programme to UKRI annually through ResearchFish in line with standard UKRI grant terms and conditions. The programme will report into EPSRC and NERC directly via annual reports.
The programme will undergo a mid-term review and a final evaluation, in years three and seven respectively. The centre will be assigned a UKRI-appointed project officer who will actively manage the successful centre investment.
Due to the collaborative nature of this award, we are looking for a few high-quality bids for funding. Therefore, applicants can be named investigators in a maximum of two applications but named as project lead on only one application. UKRI reserve the right to reject applications which do not meet the requirements of the funding opportunity.
Duration
The duration of this award is seven years.
The programme should start on 1 July 2025.
Funding available
There will be £26 million available, with £22 million over seven years for ‘core’ funding, and £4 million for years one to three for the first wave for specific research activity (see below). These are the UKRI contributions which are funded at 80% FEC over seven years.
There will be £22 million core level of funding provided by us. You are expected to request the funding required to achieve the objectives and outcomes you have proposed, for example:
- salaries of core team including your time to lead the centre and co-investigators to provide the required interdisciplinary inclusive approach, the thought leadership team, post-doctoral research assistants, management team and staff
- resources for integrating lessons learned and horizon scanning (workshops etc)
- resources to support the integration, coordination, knowledge exchange and publication activities of the centre
- governance, monitoring and evaluation activities
- impact activities (including stakeholder and user engagement, policy engagement and public engagement)
- networking and community building activities, to enable engagement and collaboration across key disciplines, sectors and investments, and with policy officials
- a flexible fund to support secondments or agile research on emerging topics and to support the involvement of discrete parts of the community, outside of the centre, that would bring significant benefit to the programme but have not otherwise been engaged (see below)
- travel, subsistence and consumables
Additionally, there will be three waves of funding available to be used for specific research activities.
These waves of funding could, for example, be used to bring in new partners or to respond to specific emerging research needs. Funding for wave one (£4 million in years one to three provided by us) will be included for the successful application and should therefore be accounted for and justified in the full application.
Funding for wave two (£2 million in years four to five) and wave three (£2 million in years six to seven) should be conceived based on findings from the centre’s initial work and will become available in future years following assessment and approval.
Funding will be released for these subsequent waves through an assessment process, this will be defined by us and we will retain responsibility for funding decisions throughout. These waves provide a further opportunity to, for example, bring on new partners and funders and respond to new and emerging opportunities.
Flexible fund
The centre is expected to provide a flexible funding mechanism which contributes to its aims and objectives. The flexible fund could be used for:
- supporting agile research on emerging topics
- supporting the involvement of the wider community, beyond the core academic members, that would bring significant benefit to the programme but have not otherwise been engaged
- bringing individuals and organisations together and growing connections, particularly with new researchers
- feasibility studies or similar small level projects, and activities
- scoping new collaborative research partnerships and projects
- proof of concept original research or technique development
The size of the flexible fund should be clearly identified in the application costings and listed under the ‘directly incurred’ headings on the application.
Please note that flexible funds may only be used for activities that may be funded through a standard research grant (for example, not studentships or the kind of student costs that would be funded through a training grant).
These opportunities can run at any time, but their timing should be considered and justified, for example; there could be several funding opportunities over the lifespan of the award
The centre should implement a proportionate governance structure for decision making on flexible funding.
You will need to think carefully about how the flexible fund budget will be commissioned via an appropriate peer review process, which can be allocated to researchers at other universities, and ensure that the allocation of funds must be fair and transparent and within the framework of the UKRI principles of assessment, decision making and of managing public money.
Advice from EPSRC and NERC should be sought post award to ensure good practice is followed in the assessment and allocation of flexible funds.
Projects funded through the flexible fund are expected to engage with the wider programme of activity and to report their progress and outcomes to the grant holder. Please note that the flexible fund will be restricted to EPSRC and NERC current research organisation eligibility, but will not be bound by standard EPSRC and NERC investigator eligibility criterion.
Equipment
Although this is not intended as a funding opportunity for significant capital expenditure, equipment over £10,000 in value (including VAT) and up to £400,000 is available through this funding opportunity. All equipment should be fully justified and essential to the aims and objectives of the investment. Single items of capital infrastructure over £400,000 are not eligible in this funding opportunity.
Smaller items of equipment (individually under £10,000) should be in the ‘Directly Incurred – Other Costs’ heading.
Quotes for equipment do not need to be included in your application, but please retain quotes for equipment costing more than £138,000 as we may ask for these at post-panel stage before releasing funds.
Given the nature of the funding opportunity, you should explain how you will ensure optimal utilisation and most sustainable life cycle of the equipment. We wish to maximise use of equipment therefore the centre must have in place a clearly articulated mechanism to share the equipment across the hub or nationally as appropriate.
Read more information on our approach to equipment funding.
What we will not fund
- NERC aircraft, ship time or use of NERC marine equipment
NERC Services and facilities
You can apply to use a facility or resource in your funding application.
You should discuss your application with the facility or service at least two months before the funding opportunity’s closing date to:
- discuss the proposed work in detail
- receive confirmation that they can provide the services required within the timeframe of the funding
The facility will provide a technical assessment that includes the calculated cost of providing the service. NERC services and facilities must be costed within the limits of the funding.
You should not submit the technical assessment with the application, but you must confirm you have received it.
For more information, see the NERC research grants and fellowships handbook.
Read the full list of NERC facilities that require a technical assessment.
High Performance Computing (HPC) and the large research facilities at Harwell have their own policies for access and costing.
Supporting skills and talent
We encourage you to follow the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and the Technician Commitment.
International collaboration
If your application includes international applicants, project partners or collaborators, visit UKRI’s trusted research and innovation for more information on effective international collaboration.
Find out about getting funding for international collaboration.
For more information on the background of this funding opportunity, go to the Additional information section.
Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I)
UKRI is committed in ensuring that effective international collaboration in research and innovation takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks. Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I) is a UKRI work programme designed to help protect all those working in our thriving and collaborative international sector by enabling partnerships to be as open as possible, and as secure as necessary. Our TR&I Principles set out UKRI’s expectations of organisations funded by UKRI in relation to due diligence for international collaboration.
As such, applicants for UKRI funding may be asked to demonstrate how their proposed projects will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help proportionately reduce these risks.
See further guidance and information about TR&I, including where applicants can find additional support.
