Faraday Battery Challenge Round 5 Innovation: CR&D

Overview

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £25 million in innovation projects across the two strands of this competition. This funding is from the Faraday Battery Challenge (FBC).

Scope

The Faraday Battery Challenge (FBC) aims to:

ensure the UK automotive sector meets its net zero commitments in the required timescale, by enabling the development and scale-up of sustainable battery technologies
ensure the UK prospers from a just and fair transition to electrification, by taking action to develop a world class intellectual and physical supply chain for batteries in the UK

The aims of this competition are to:

support business-led research and development of sustainable propulsion batteries
support technologies with the potential to enter the automotive market within the next 10 years and, where appropriate, allow for early or cooperative entry into other sectors
move UK battery innovations from technological potential towards commercial capability
develop and secure material and manufacturing supply chains for battery technologies in the UK

Technoeconomic research carried out in collaboration with the FBC, indicates that batteries for transport electrification can generally be classified into the following cross sector cell level performance clusters:

power focused, weight sensitive
power focused, cost sensitive
energy focused, cost sensitive
energy focused, weight and power sensitive

Projects must balance specific technical, market and business requirements for developing and emerging technologies and enable UK competitiveness across the battery value chain.

Innovate UK are particularly interested in projects that are focused on the following:

high power and high energy density, where safety can enable high performance applications
low cost and lower energy density technologies with lower reliance on critical minerals such as Cobalt and Nickel
technologies enabling high cycle life
technologies developing sustainable batteries, for example, which improve resource efficiency, reduce energy intensity of processes or increase recyclability
building and securing the UK supply chain
development of more efficient and globally competitive manufacturing processes

Your project can achieve these through a combination of innovations in process improvement, cell chemistry, cell-to-pack efficiency and novel design concepts. We expect successful projects to increase productivity, competitiveness and growth for UK businesses.

Specific Themes

Your project must focus on:

extraction and processing of raw materials
development and manufacture of cell materials and components
design and manufacture of novel cell, module and pack concepts
end of life and recycling technologies
development of the UK battery supply chain
enabling physical and digital technologies which support the design, development, optimisation and deployment of propulsion batteries

Where project activities require:

an Environmental Permit (England and Wales)
Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (Scotland and Northern Ireland) Permit
a Waste Management Licence (Scotland and Northern Ireland)
you to comply with the Waste Battery and Accumulator Regulations (UK)

Projects must provide proof of compliance to the satisfaction of Innovate UK as part of UK Research and Innovation to enable an application to be successful.

This may include (but is not restricted to):

a valid permit
a valid licence
an approved battery treatment operator (ABTO) status details
an agreed regulatory position statement or definition of waste opinion

by either the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency or Northern Ireland Environment Agency

Eligibility

Your project must:

have total costs between £500,000 to £12 million
start by 1 January 2023
end by 31 December 2024
last up to 24 months
carry out all of its project work in the UK
intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

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 your organisation must:

be a UK registered business of any size
collaborate with other UK registered organisations
be or involve at least one micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

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

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

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

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

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 project costs.

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

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

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that are:

fundamental research projects or projects which are academic intensive
business as usual
non-collaborative
aiming to secure funding for capital equipment as a primary focus
not giving due consideration to the cost, market and business requirements of the technology
not demonstrating a viable route to entry into the automotive market within an approximate 10 year timeframe
focusing on physical integration of battery technologies into vehicles
dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Funding Costs

Up to £25 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition across both strands:

Up to £23 million has been allocated for this collaborative research and development (CR&D) strand.

Innovate UK reserve the right to take a portfolio approach for funding across the two strands.

Funding will be in the form of a grant.

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

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

Back

R&D Tax Credits

Grant Funding

Other Services

Insights

Events