IETF Phase 1: Spring 2021 provides up to £40 million of grant funding for energy efficiency projects and studies. Innovate UK and BEIS are jointly delivering this phase of the competition for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Phase 1: Spring 2021 project types

Phase 1: Spring 2021 provides funding for:

• projects deploying technologies that improve the energy efficiency of industrial processes
• feasibility and engineering studies into energy efficiency and deep decarbonisation measures for industrial processes

Competition dates

For Phase 1: Spring 2021 applications, the competition:

• opens on Monday 8 March 2021
• closes on Wednesday 14 July 2021

Eligibility

The Phase 1: Spring 2021 competition is open to businesses of any size registered in England, Wales or Northern Ireland. To be eligible, your business must operate a site which falls into the following categories of activity:

• manufacturing 10(000) through to 33(200)
• data centres 63(110)

Businesses are allocated a SIC code at the time of registering at Companies House. You need to check your business SIC code to make sure you are eligible. In the case that a parent company has a SIC Code that does not reflect the activity carried out at the site of the proposed application, for example where a data centre is owned by a telecoms company, you may be eligible and should contact Innovate UK for further details at ietf@innovateuk.ukri.org.

The documents here provide more detail on the eligibility criteria.

Funding

The funding will be awarded as grants towards the total costs of successful proposals. To be eligible, proposals must fall within the stated minimum and maximum award thresholds:

Funding applied for	Minimum threshold per application	Maximum threshold per project
Energy efficiency deployment projects	£100,000	£14 million
Engineering studies	£50,000	£14 million
Feasibility studies	£30,000	£7 million

The minimum thresholds have been lowered in response to feedback received during Phase 1: Summer 2020.

For energy efficiency deployment projects, you must use the project benefit calculator v2.0 in your application.

Get in touch

If you need more information about the application process for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, please contact Innovate UK:

• by email ietf@innovateuk.ukri.org
• by phone – call the helpline on 0300 321 4357 between 9:00-11:30am and 2:00-4:30pm, Monday to Friday

Innovate UK offers an eligibility screening service which you should use if you have any queries about your proposed application. Type ‘Eligibility screening assessment request’ as the subject line of your email if you require this service.