IETF energy efficiency and decarbonisation studies, Spring 2021

This competition aims to support feasibility and engineering studies necessary to enable an investment decision in energy efficiency and deep decarbonisation solutions. This is the second round of the IETF Phase 1 competition.

IETF will award up to £40 million across 2 strands. These are:

• feasibility and engineering studies (this strand)
• deployment projects

In this strand, you must be an industrial businesses of any size to apply. You can apply on your own or in collaboration with other organisations. Your project must take place at a manufacturing site or data centre in England, Wales or Northern Ireland and be led by the operator of that site.

The other competition strand, IETF deployment of energy efficiency technologies, Spring 2021, will fund projects that deploy energy efficiency technology.

Your project must:

• start by 01 July 2022
• end by 30 June 2024
• last up to 12 months if it is a feasibility study
• last up to 24 months if it is an engineering study

The end-beneficiary of the study must be a single manufacturing site or data centre in England, Wales or Northern Ireland.

You can include multiple projects within your application but you must make sure:

• all projects are located at the same eligible site
• all individual elements are eligible

If you are submitting multiple studies, we will assess your application as a single submission.

If you want to apply to conduct studies across different sites, you will need to submit one application for each site.

Commitment to knowledge sharing

You must consent to produce a case study for knowledge sharing during your project. It will be made publicly available so should not include any commercially sensitive information.

For this competition your business must fall into the following categories of activity:

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

If you are a parent company with a SIC Code which does not reflect the activity carried out at the site of the proposed project, please email ietf@innovateuk.ukri.org with your organisation’s details, project locations and a brief outline of your project. An example of this would be where a data centre is owned by a telecoms company. We will work with you to establish whether the activity at the site is eligible for this competition.

Feasibility studies

A feasibility study aims to investigate a chosen technological solution and the technical, economic and operational impacts that this technology would have if it was to be deployed to the process in the future.

Applicants carrying out a feasibility study of technologies associated with energy efficiency should aim to demonstrate the economic case for the technology and associated emissions reductions, while ensuring that the technological barriers are identified and are manageable.

For deep decarbonisation feasibility studies, applicants should demonstrate that the technology is sufficiently well-developed and feasible to be used in the process, while increasing understanding of the economic impacts that deploying the solution will have on the process. Feasibility studies should not be carried out as part of an options analysis, as a single technology should have been already identified prior to the study.

Engineering study

An engineering study is a detailed project plan that identifies specific technical and operational requirements, equivalent to a Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) study. The output of an engineering study is expected to be a full project plan, incorporating all of the information required to fully understand a project and to allow the project to be at a state where a final investment decision can be made.

Your project must provide sufficient detail to arrive at an investment decision at the end of the engineering study, with key technical and project scheduling work already complete, including indication of full confidence that the project is ready to be delivered on receipt of internal approval.

Both feasibility studies and engineering studies must focus on energy efficiency or deep decarbonisation.

An online briefing event will be held on 11th March, 10am-12.45pm: click here to register for a place.

If you want help to find a project partner or for general advice on developing and improving your application, contact Jenni Mcdonnell, jenni.mcdonnell@iuk.ktn-uk.org, at the Knowledge Transfer Network.