Contracts for Innovation: Resource Efficient Chemicals Impacts

Overview

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), in collaboration with Innovate UK, will invest up to £3 million in this Contracts for Innovation competition.

The aim of this competition is to build on the DESNZ Unlocking Resource Efficiency research by supporting organisations to deliver an impact validation report for a resource efficiency solution.

This should be informed by a demonstration which may be carried out as part of the project or otherwise conducted within the last five years.

The innovative resource efficiency solutions should address themes in one of the following strands:

• Resource Efficient Construction Impacts
• Resource Efficient Chemicals Impacts (this strand)
• Resource Efficient Automotive Impacts

This is a single phase competition.

Scope

Innovate UK and DESNZ are collaborating with the chemicals, construction and automotive sectors to accelerate and increase the adoption of innovative resource efficient technologies, low carbon materials and circular business models. This is supporting the government’s commitment to transition the UK to a Net Zero, circular economy.

This competition will focus on the impact validation of resource efficiency solutions. This competition will support the development and delivery of high maturity demonstrations, and the validation of demonstrators from recent (within the last five years) research and development projects.

This competition will:

• enable efficient integration of technologies into targeted industrial sectors
• support innovative suppliers for market readiness
• provide more granular evidence on the potential impact of resource efficiency solutions to help meet the UK’s territorial carbon budget targets

As a minimum, proposals into this competition must relate to solutions at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5 or higher. If you have validated your solution at TRL5 (in a relevant environment) your project should be to validate up to TRL7 (in an operational environment) and gather operational data to develop a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA).

If you have already validated at TRL7, your project should be to gather operational data to develop an LCA.

In both cases, the solution should still be a prototype or custom built system, not a full commercial version. You must show evidence of this, the testing and validation previously undertaken as part of your application and identify the TRL that you expect to be at start and end of the project.

This strand: Resource Efficient Chemicals Impact

You must focus on innovative solutions within the chemicals value chain. Solutions should improve the resource efficiency of the sector and reduce life cycle emissions.

You must demonstrate a credible and practical route to market, so your application must include an assessment of the commercial viability of your solution and a plan to commercialise your results.

Demonstration

A key project deliverable, that must be included in your milestones, is a demonstration of the solution. The further validation of demonstrations and trials from recent research and development projects is also in scope, provided these meet the eligibility requirements for this competition. Costs for retrospective work cannot be claimed, only new analysis to validate the potential impact of the demonstrated technology.

The demonstration must take place in an environment representative of where the solution will be deployed, allowing for effective evaluation. As part of your project milestones, you are encouraged to invite stakeholders from your target sector to a demonstration event. The demonstration must take place in a setting where potential customers and industry representatives can witness the solution as a compelling business proposition.

If your own organisation does not have operations in the relevant sector, it is expected you will include an integration supporter, for example, a trusted sector representative in your project to help facilitate the demonstration and trialling of your solution. In their role as potential future customers, they will be well placed to propose an appropriately representative environment.

You will be expected to collaborate with your integration supporter to achieve this, securing all necessary permissions and approvals.

Example environments include:

• within a manufacturing process
• within a recovery or recycling facility
• within a remanufacturing, re-use or repair facility
• in an end-use site, such as a construction project
• within a customer facing environment, such as retail

This list is not exhaustive, and other environments may be more appropriate to demonstrate certain types of solutions.

Impact Validation Report

Projects must produce an impact validation report, informed by measuring and analysing data to evaluate the lifecycle impacts and commercial scale-up potential of the demonstrated resource efficiency solution. This should identify the solution’s potential to decarbonise the target sector and contribute to UK territorial carbon savings.

The impact validation report should compare baseline data related to the competition theme and outline the improvement from your solution using data from the demonstration or trial.

The impact validation report is a key deliverable and must be included as part of your milestones.

Specific themes

For applications in this Resource Efficient Chemicals Impacts strand, your project can focus on one main theme:

Solutions must fall within one or more of the following themes:

1) Industrial symbiosis: uses for industrial by-products, including materials that would otherwise go to waste or be downgraded to lower value uses, but excluding heat and energy

2) Redesign of chemical formulations and products to reduce emissions and improve circularity, such as:

• reductions in resource intensity of chemical formulations for a given product, or products
• production efficiencies to reduce material waste and improve yield rates when using defossilised chemical feedstocks
• transitions to circular business models including ‘chemicals as a service’ or ‘chemical leasing’ approaches

3) Defossilisation: replacement of virgin fossil-based organic feedstocks with captured CO2, particularly where:

• the CO2 may be derived from sustainable bioenergy, direct air capture or other point sources; impact validation should include these activities
• any hydrogen feedstock used is not fossil derived

4) Defossilisation: replacement of virgin fossil-based organic feedstocks with sustainable biomass.

5) Defossilisation: replacement of virgin fossil based organic feedstocks through chemical plastic recycling, or other valorisation routes for waste streams

Solutions in the defossilisation themes could include:

• development of new tier 2 and 3 chemical synthesis routes that do not rely on fossil-derived based chemicals
• development of chemical formulations that do not rely on the traditional petrochemical value chain and support the creation of high value consumer products
• repurposing and retrofitting of existing process equipment built for fossil-based feedstocks
• repurposing and retrofitting of feedstock supply chains built for fossil-based feedstocks
• improvements in feedstock quality
• feedstock distribution and logistics

You must focus on one main theme but your project may cross over into other themes.

Project duration

Between 3 and 5 months

Must start after 01 November 2025

End by 31 March 2025

Contract value

Have total costs of between £50,000 and £300,000, inclusive of VAT

It is expected that the majority of projects will have costs less than £100,000

Funding rates

100% funded

Eligibility criteria

• Funding is for prototype development and evaluation which can include prototyping, demonstrating, piloting, testing and validation of new or improved products, processes or services in environments representative of real-life operating conditions.
• Projects must be led by an organisation of any size, including those based in the EU, EEA or internationally
• Contracts will be awarded to a single entity only
• Subcontractors can be used for specialist skills and can be businesses, research organisations, research and technology organisations or the third sector(charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups)
• You must select whether you are VAT registered before entering your eligible project costs
• If you are VAT registered, you must enter your eligible project costs exclusive of VAT and your total eligible project costs inclusive of VAT must not exceed £5 million
• If you are not VAT registered, you must enter your eligible project costs exclusive of VAT and your total project costs must not exceed £5 million