The challenge
Environmental crime represents a critical global challenge that severely impacts ecosystems, public health, and the economy. It is now recognised as the world’s fourth-largest criminal enterprise, generating up to €230 billion in annual global economic losses (UNEP-INTERPOL). This threat has driven a massive regulatory shift, marked by the enforcement of the EU’s Environmental Crime Directive and intensified global anti-greenwashing laws. Non-compliance can now trigger severe corporate penalties – reaching up to 10% of total global revenue – and expose executives to personal penalties.
Scope of the Funding Call
This opportunity supports the development of space-based applications and services targeting the following areas:
- Integrity and corporate fraud: Greenwashing, falsified environmental certifications, and verifying carbon credit baselines.
- Poaching and wildlife: Illicit trade of protected species and endangered flora, and monitoring online black markets.
- Illegal fishing and marine activities: Dark vessel tracking, Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, and maritime bilge dumping.
- Illegal mining and quarrying: Unauthorised mineral extraction footprints, unpermitted sand mining and critical raw material tracing.
- Waste and pollution: Illegal transboundary waste shipments, e-waste dumping, landfill expansions, chemical spills, and toxic emissions.
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Organisations eligible to apply for funding under ESA programmes include entities from ESA Member States, Associate States, and Cooperating States that have subscribed to the relevant programme. (The UK is a member state, but has not subscribed to every programme – please check with the UK Space Agency before submitting to a funded call).
Applicants can include private companies (large industry, SMEs, and start-ups), research institutions and universities, as well as public organisations developing space services.
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One or more of the following operational needs could be addressed by the proposals submitted under this Call for Proposals:
- Detect and monitor: Establishing wide-area situational awareness, mapping environmental risk factors and identifying operational anomalies across vulnerable or remote geographic regions.
- Track and trace: Monitoring the end-to-end movement, routing and provenance of physical goods, commodities or materials from point of origin to final destination across global supply chains.
- Verify: Automating compliance checking, performance auditing and validating reporting accuracy to independently substantiate sustainability claims and manage regulatory liabilities.
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Satellite data and technology must play a critical role in the solutions proposed for this opportunity.
- Satellite Earth Observation (SatEO): utilising satellite imagery and automated analytics to support wide-area surveillance, flag operational anomalies, and provide independent verification of physical land or asset conditions.
- Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS / SatNav): using satellite positioning data to provide reliable geofencing, enhanced logistics tracking, and tamper-resistant provenance records across global supply chains.
- Satellite Communications (SatCom): leveraging satellite data networks, Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity, and edge processing capabilities to securely transmit automated alerts, field measurements, and critical sensor metrics from remote or under-connected geographic regions.
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We look for motivated teams with established business, financial and technical expertise who can address our focus areas with market-ready concepts. Submitted proposals must demonstrate:
- Commercial Viability and Sustainable Business Models: Service concepts designed for long-term commercial profitability. Projects targeting public sector or law enforcement users (B2G) are strongly encouraged to incorporate commercial B2B customer streams to ensure post-project sustainability.
- Operational Readiness over Research: A clear focus on deploying pre-operational commercial services rather than pure academic research or basic scientific data exploration. Concepts must be driven by practical market demand and active user support.
- Technical Data Self-Sufficiency: Bidding teams must already possess the internal technical capability to acquire and process downstream space data. Teams must be self-sufficient from the outset, as ESA provides financial and strategic backing rather than direct software engineering support.
- Distinct Space Added Value: Clear, measurable operational or commercial advantages derived directly from the integration of space assets over traditional terrestrial alternatives.
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If you would like help to find a collaboration partner or advice, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Space team.