IETF deployment of energy efficiency technologies, Spring 2021

This competition aims to support the commercial roll out and permanent installation of technologies at industrial sites. This is the second round of the IETF Phase 1 competition.

The Industrial Energy Technology Fund (IETF) will support the onsite deployment of technologies that improve the energy efficiency of an industrial process or processes.

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

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

In this strand you must be an industrial business 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 energy efficiency and decarbonisation studies, Spring 2021, will fund projects that support energy efficiency and decarbonisation studies.

Your project must:

• start by 1 January 2023
• end by 31 December 2024
• have a minimum total grant funding of £100,000

At the end of your project you must have installed and begun to operate (or be ready to operate) the energy efficiency technology.

Your project work must be carried out at 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 projects, we will assess your application as a single submission.

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

Eligible project costs

The IETF will only award grant funding to cover the eligible costs of deploying technologies where it can be demonstrated that these costs are additional and necessary to achieving the energy efficiency saving.

You must include a counterfactual case as part of your application. This means you have to refer to a similar, less energy efficient investment that would have been credibly carried out without the grant.

The difference between the costs of both cases of investment identifies the energy efficiency-related cost and constitutes the eligible costs.

If the technology’s only purpose is to achieve energy savings (for example in the case of a heat exchanger project) then it is possible to consider the total investment costs as eligible costs.

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.

You will need to check your business SIC code to make sure you are eligible.
For this competition your business must fall into the following categories of activity:

• manufacturing SIC 10 (000) through to SIC 33 (200)
• data centres SIC 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.

Energy saving solutions will differ from site to site, but some examples of eligible technologies include:

• monitoring and management equipment that improves the efficiency of processes
• more efficient heat exchange
• more efficient driers
• energy recovery from waste heat
• energy recovery from waste pressure
• onsite resource efficiency measures to reduce wastage and optimise use of raw materials.
• more efficient refrigeration or other cooling or heating measures necessary to create and maintain the operational temperature of the industrial process itself (including cooling technologies for data centres).
• fuel switching is permitted where it is essential to achieving energy efficiency improvements. Fuel switching must comply with eligibility criteria detailed in the supplementary Technological Scope for Energy Efficiency Studies and Deployment Projects guidance.

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.