UK Grants - Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition Round 2

open now Opened: 25 May 2022 | Closes: 13 July 2022

Overview

UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £12 million for innovative clean maritime projects. This funding is from The Department for Transport.

Description

The Department for Transport will work with Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, to invest £12 million in innovative feasibility studies and pre-deployment projects. This competition is part of a suite of interventions to be launched by the UK Shipping Office for Reducing Emissions (UK SHORE). UK SHORE aims to transform the UK into a global leader in the design and manufacturing of clean maritime technology.

The Clean Maritime Demonstration Round 2 competition has two strands:

Strand 1: Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition Round 2 - Feasibility
Strand 2: Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition Round 2 – Collaborative R&D (this strand)

It is your responsibility to ensure you are submitting your application to the correct strand for your project. You will not be able to transfer your application and it will not be sent for assessment if it is out of scope.

Funding is available in strand 2 to support agile development and pre-deployment testing of clean maritime technologies.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.

Funding Type

Grant

Project size

Your project’s total costs must be between £100,000 and £3 million.

Who can apply

Your project

Your project must:

have total costs between £100,000 and £3 million
end by 31 August 2023
carry out all of its project work in the UK
intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

Your project can start by 1 January 2023.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian source.

If your total project’s costs or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 15 working days before the competition closes. Innovate UK will decide whether to approve your request. 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.

Lead organisation

To lead a project or your organisation must:

be a UK registered business of any size,
collaborate with other UK registered organisations

Project team

To collaborate with the lead organisation, your partner organisation must be one of the following:

The lead and at least one other organisation must claim funding by entering their costs during the application.

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead organisation 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.

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs.

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. Innovate UK 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

There is no limit on how many applications an organisation can submit in this competition, either as a lead or a partner.

If you are involved in more than one submission, you must clearly state in your application, how all projects can be resourced and delivered if successful.

Previous Applications

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Innovate UK 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

Subsidy Control (and state aid where applicable)

This competition provides funding in line with the UK's obligations and commitments to Subsidy Control. Further information about the UK Subsidy Control requirements can be found within the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation agreement and the subsequent guidance from the department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

Innovate UK is unable to award organisations that are considered to be in financial difficulty. Innovate UK will conduct financial viability and eligibility tests to confirm this is not the case following the application stage.

EU State aid rules now only apply in limited circumstances. Please see our general guidance to check if these rules apply to your organisation.

Further Information

If you are unsure about your obligations under the UK Subsidy Control regime or the State aid rules, you should take independent legal advice. Innovate UK is unable to advise on individual eligibility or legal obligations.

You must at all times make sure that the funding awarded to you is compliant with all current Subsidy Control legislation applicable in the United Kingdom.
This aims to regulate any advantage granted by a public sector body which threatens to, or actually distorts competition in the United Kingdom or any other country or countries.

If there are any changes to the above requirements that mean Innovate UK needs to change the terms of this competition, Innovate UK will tell you as soon as possible.

Funding

Innovate UK has allocated funding from the £12 million budget for innovation projects in this strand 2 of the competition.

Innovate UK and the Department for Transport (DfT) reserves the right to move funding between the two strands of this competition.

DfT and Innovate UK reserves the right to dedicate a proportion of this funding, approximately £3.5 million, to prioritised technology themes for this strand. These technologies are considered strategic areas of importance for the UK.

Approximately £2.5 million will be used to support projects addressing other technology themes.

If the majority of your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically.

For industrial research projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
up to 50% if you are a large organisation
For more information on company sizes, please refer to the company accounts guidance. This is a change from the EU definition unless you are applying under State aid.

If you are applying for an award funded under State aid Regulations, the definitions are set out in the European Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003.

Research participation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them.

Of that 30% you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic
100% of your project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation