The Environmental Monitoring Innovation competition is offering grants of up to £315,000 for organisations working on solutions that will enable improved monitoring of environmental variables.
Funding for this £5 million competition is provided by Innovate UK and the Department for Environmental, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra). The competition opened on 22 January 2024 and closes on 6 March 2024 at 11 am.
Below are the key things you need to know about this competition: who is eligible, how much funding you can access and how to apply.
Thinking about applying for the Environmental Monitoring Competition? Our Coaching and Strategic Grants Review services let you harness GrantTree’s decades of grant-winning expertise alongside personalised feedback from an active Innovate UK assessor explaining how to strengthen your application.
To learn more about how GrantTree can help you secure a sizable grant from the Environmental Monitoring Competition, get in touch.
Am I eligible for the Environmental Monitoring Innovation competition?
To make things easier, we’ll look at the eligibility criteria for your project and your organisation separately.
Your project
Your project must:
- Be an industrial research project*
- Have total project costs of £150,000 to £450,000
- Start by 1 August 2024 and end by 31 January 2026
- Last between 3 and 18 months
*Industrial research projects look to understand whether the component of a product or system being developed in the project works in real-life or operational environments.
Your project must also focus on one of the challenge areas:
- Biodiversity and natural capital
- Greenhouse gas (GHG) and ammonia emissions from Defra sectors
- Soil health (including measuring soil carbon)
- Water quality
Innovate UK says it is looking for projects that will:
- Support the development of new sensing systems and monitoring capabilities that will improve existing approaches or introduce new ones
- Support the testing of these products, verifying their accuracy and reliability, and potential for at-scale deployment
- Strengthen partnerships and stimulate innovative approaches between academia and public and private sector organisations
You must carry out all of your project work in the UK and intend to exploit all the results from that work in the UK also.
Your organisation
To lead a project, your organisation must be a UK-registered business.
You must also collaborate with other UK-registered organisations, such as other businesses, academic institutions, not-for-profits, and research and technology organisations (RTOs).
How much funding could I access?
If you are a company, the size of the grant you can access depends on how large you are. Here’s a breakdown of the percentage of project costs companies of different sizes can receive in grant funding:
- 70% if you’re a micro or small organisation
- 60% if you’re a medium-sized organisation
- 50% if you’re a large organisation
So if you’re a medium-sized organisation with total project costs of £300,000, you could secure up to £180,000 in grant funding.
Read what the terms micro, small, medium and large mean in relation to grant funding.
If you’re a research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, you can share up to 50% of the total eligible costs. Of that 50%, you could get funding worth:
- 80% of the full economic costs (FEC) of your costs if you’re a Je-S registered institution
- 100% of your project costs if you’re an RTO, charity, not-for-profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation
How do I apply?
The application is split into four sections:
- Project details
- Application questions
- Finances
- Project Impact
Project details is unscored and consists of five areas.
Application questions has 13 questions, all of which are scored apart from the first two.
Finances is where you and your partners detail your planned expenditure for the project.
Project impact isn’t scored but provides Innovate UK will valuable background information about what impact you believe your project will have.
Maximise your chances of success with grant-winning expertise
The Environmental Monitoring Innovation competition offers businesses and other organisations working on environmental monitoring technologies the opportunity to secure more than £300,000 in grant funding.
If you’re currently preparing or planning to prepare an application, GrantTree’s grant-writing experts can empower you with the tools and insights you need to give your submission the best possible chance of success.
Our Strategic Grants Review Service delivers two rounds of detailed, actionable feedback from a current Innovate UK assessor on how to strengthen your application. The feedback is easy to implement and highly tailored to the competition you’re applying to.
Meanwhile, our Coaching Service is a collaborative offering where a veteran grants writer with experience in your industry works with your team to prepare a compelling, eye-catching application, equipping your people with the skills they have honed after years of preparing winning submissions. You’ll also receive a round of detailed feedback from an active Innovate UK assessor, helping you take the final step towards success.
To learn more about these services and whether they’re right for you, just get in touch. We’d be delighted to help!
