Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition Round 2 – Collaborative R&D

Key Features

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.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £12 million

Opens: 25th May 2022

Closes: 13th Jul 2022

! This scheme is now closed

Overview

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.

Scope

This strand 2 of the competition is funding agile technology demonstrations and pre-deployment testing of clean maritime technologies.

Your project must design, develop and test novel clean maritime technologies focused for on-vessel technologies or shoreside infrastructure including at ports and harbours.

If your project is focused on on-vessel technologies, you must only involve factory or dry dock testing. Your project must not plan to test technologies in the water as part of this project. In water demonstrations will be part of future projects which may be funded as part of later CMDC competitions.

You must plan for the real world demonstration or deployment developed in your project to be operational in water by March 2025.

Your project must:

  • underpin an at scale technology demonstration later in 2023 or after, by delivering a meaningful technology, route to market, or supply chain innovation
  • achieve market potential through a clear strategy for commercialising the technology and the products, demonstrating the potential for significant value to the UK
  • deliver emissions reduction by demonstrating a significant greenhouse gas reduction
  • bring together a team with the necessary expertise and experience to successfully deliver the project according to its objectives, and include a representative end user such as vessel operators, ports or harbour authorities

Technologies for all sizes and categories of maritime vessel are in scope. Solutions can be suitable for one target size of vessel or multiple. Pleasure and commercial vessels are in scope.

Where a project intends to utilise a vessel, the vessel should be a United Kingdom Ship, as defined in 85(2) of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, or you must provide justification for use of a non-United Kingdom Ship in your application.

All ports and harbours are in scope, including infrastructure for freight, passenger, pleasure and commercial vessels.

Innovate UK strongly encourage projects from around the UK to support boosting jobs and economic growth, including from ports, vessel operators, vessel manufacturers and their supply chain. We welcome projects from areas with existing clean maritime expertise or co-located in clusters of renewable energy production and usage including hydrogen.

You must clearly demonstrate how you will anchor IP generated by the project in the UK and how it will be exploited for the benefit of the UK supply chain in the future.

Once your collaborative R&D project is completed, you are expected to be capable of progressing to the point that you are investment and construction ready.

At the end of your collaborative R&D project, you must:

  • produce a clear, detailed and costed plan for how the solution will be further demonstrated or deployed in an operational setting such as in a port or on vessels, including your technical approach, objectives and business case
  • detail your plan for compliance with regulation and how you will work with relevant regulatory bodies for novel technologies
  • quantify the potential reduction of lifecycle emissions and positive economic impacts in the future
  • explain your understanding of any barriers to market adoption
  • outline the expected commercial applications and exploitation, and potential market segments for your outcomes
  • share your findings with DfT, Maritime and Coastguard agency (MCA) and Innovate UK.
  • produce a clear plan for disseminating the results of your demonstration project and knowledge sharing

Specific Themes

Your project can focus on one or more of the following technology themes.

Prioritised technology themes:

  • pilot fuel free hydrogen internal combustion engine technologies for maritime applications
  • whole-ship energy efficiency design and integration
  • safe on-board storage of hydrogen and ammonia
  • larger (2.5 Mega Watt plus) marinised fuel cell systems
  • small craft alternative for fuel bunkering and charging

Other technologies

Vessel low and zero emission technologies:

  • vessel propulsion and auxiliary engines, for example, battery, fuel cell, and internal combustion engines using low or zero carbon alternative fuels such as hydrogen, methanol or ammonia, including hybrids and engines capable of using multiple fuels including zero emission options.
  • wind propulsion, including soft-sail, fixed-sail, rotor, kite and turbine technologies, targeting a range of ship types from small vessels to large cargo carriers, both as primary and auxiliary propulsion.
  • low carbon energy storage and management
  • physical connections to shoreside power or alternative fuels, including fuelling lines
  • enabling technologies such as motors, drives, sensor and power electronics

Port and shoreside, including offshore solutions:

  • shoreside low and zero carbon fuelling including bunkering of such fuels
  • charging infrastructure and management
  • low and zero emission shoreside power solutions, such as enabling docked vessels to turn off their conventional power supply for ancillary systems
  • physical connections to shoreside power or alternative fuels, including fuelling lines
  • shoreside renewable energy generation at the port to supply vessels
  • zero emission shoreside power supply for vessels, including grid or renewable energy supply
  • low carbon fuel production, such as hydrogen, methanol, ammonia
  • zero emission infrastructure, including stationary assets for freight handling and port operations

 

Eligibility

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.

To lead a project or your organisation must:

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

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

  • business of any size
  • academic institution
  • charity
  • not for profit
  • public sector organisation
  • research and technology organisation (RTO)

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 aproject.

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

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

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

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that:

  • focus only on increasing the efficiency of current conventional fossil fuels and fossil fuel powertrains of maritime vessels
  • involve aqua culture
  • focus on marine conservation and ecology, such as mapping the sea floor
  • focus on autonomy and smart shipping
  • focus on on-vessel power generation and fuel production to reduce green house gases (GHG’s), for example, wind turbines, solar panels, synthetic fuel production
  • are for capital investment only
  • are investigating the feasibility of financial products, including green finance, except as part of projects for feasibility studies on international green corridors
  • focus on biofuels, except for projects strictly focused on inland waterway vessels and Non-Road Mobile Machinery (NRMM), which includes port-side machinery
  • focus on nuclear propulsion
  • are dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a vessel manufacturer on the condition that it uses 50% UK sourced components in their product
  • are dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a vessel manufacturer on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of vessels to another country

Funding Costs

Innovate UK have 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

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

Interested in applying for this competition?

Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.