This competition is open to UK-registered end-user businesses, including SMEs, leading a consortium with at least one UK space supplier and any additional integrator or delivery partner organisations required to support project delivery.

For the purposes of this competition, end-user businesses are organisations that use space-enabled products, services or insights to address operational challenges, improve decision-making, manage risk or deliver commercial outcomes.

The competition is particularly aimed at end-user organisations operating in sectors including financial services, insurance, asset management, energy, utilities, infrastructure, agriculture, land management and environmental services.

Applications from organisations in other sectors are also welcome, provided they can demonstrate a clear environmental intelligence or emissions-related use case aligned with the competition objectives.

The UK Space Agency invites applications from end-user-led consortia comprising:

• An end-user organisation seeking to address one of the competition’s environmental intelligence or emissions challenge statements
• At least one supplier of space-enabled data, products or services; and
• Any additional delivery partners or integrators required to support successful project delivery.

The partners can include other businesses, research organisations including academia, public & third sector organisations. Collaborations involving an SME and/or a research and knowledge dissemination organisation may receive a 15% subsidy uplift.

Projects are expected to start in January 2027 and run for approximately 9 months.

Projects must be sufficiently mature to demonstrate operational value within the funded period and deliver measurable outcomes by the end of the project.

The UK Space Agency intends to award up to £2 million through this competition.

Applicants may request up to £400,000 grant funding per project. Total project costs may be higher where match funding is provided by consortium partners.

Businesses in the consortium can claim up to 70% of their total costs, depending on project type and business size. See the competition document for the exact funding limits.

The Unlocking Space for Business programme aims to:

• Stimulate Demand for UK Space Applications: identify high-value use cases across sectors and support end-user organisations to adopt space-enabled solutions;
• Deliver Tangible Benefits : Deliver real-world projects that show how space data and services can improve outcomes for end user businesses;
• Reduce Barriers to Adoption: provide support to help end-user organisations integrate space solutions into their operations, including technical, commercial and operational guidance; and
• Build Cross-Sector Partnerships: bring together space companies, end users, and integrators to co-develop solutions and scale adoption.

This USB Environmental Intelligence and Emissions Grant Call is challenge-led, focusing on funding specific environmental intelligence and emissions opportunities where space-enabled technologies can address recognised end-user business needs. Applicants are expected to evidence:

• Strategic alignment: how their proposed project responds to one of the two challenge areas outlined within this guidance;
• Economic benefits to end-user business: how their project aims to deliver clear economic benefits for an identified end-user organisation in the UK; and
• Supporting growth of space supplier: how their project supports the growth of a UK space supplier in the consortium through increased TRL and economic growth.
• Pathway to future adoption: how the project could support longer-term adoption by the end user, including evidence of a credible route to further deployment, procurement or commercial implementation following completion of the funded project.

Projects must deliver a clear environmental monitoring benefit and positive economic benefit to a UK-based end-user organisation.

Proposals must be led by UK-based,  end-user organisations, and should demonstrate a credible route to operational adoption of a space-enabled solution.

Projects must involve at least one satellite data domain: Earth Observation (EO), Satellite Communications (SatCom), Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT).

Projects may also involve complementary technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Quantum technologies.

Projects must start at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5+ and must progress to at least TRL 7 by the end of the project.

Projects should be sufficiently mature to demonstrate operational value during the funded period and must deliver measurable outcomes by the end of the project. Projects must have clearly defined and tangible outcomes measured against success criteria, and should demonstrate a credible pathway towards longer-term adoption, commercialisation and growth beyond the funded project.

Applications must clearly explain:

• the environmental monitoring challenge being addressed
• why space-enabled capabilities are required
• the expected economic benefits for the end user
• the pathway to future adoption and commercialisation
• how project success will be measured

The challenge

How can space-enabled data provide trusted, scalable environmental intelligence to enable organisations to better understand, manage and respond to climate-related and nature-related risks, whilst supporting the monitoring and verification of environmental outcomes?

The context

Businesses across the private sector increasingly need reliable environmental information to support climate adaptation, nature recovery, inform infrastructure resilience and make sustainable investment decisions. However, environmental information is often fragmented, difficult to access and challenging to integrate into operational decision-making.

Space-derived data can provide consistent, repeatable and large scale monitoring of environmental conditions that would otherwise be costly or impractical to observe through terrestrial methods alone. When combined with geospatial analytics and other data sources, it can support businesses to assess environmental risks, monitor changes over time and evidence environmental outcomes

The solution

We are seeking to fund innovative, near to market commercial solutions that demonstrate how space-enabled technologies can improve environmental decision making, monitoring and verification for end-user UK businesses, and support the adoption of environmental intelligence across a range of sectors. Projects should be led by an end-user business around a clearly defined operational or commercial challenge end-user s piloting a space-derived solution which is integrated into their operational decision-making.

Projects may support end-user businesses seeking to improve climate resilience, assess environmental dependencies and impacts, monitor biodiversity outcomes, or generate trusted environmental evidence for investment and decision making. Examples of relevant subsectors include investment, insurance, asset management, banking and wider financial services.

Solutions in scope:

• Climate and nature risk assessment tools that use space-enabled technologies
• Solutions that support infrastructure resilience planning and climate adaptation
• Monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) services for biodiversity, habitat condition or nature recovery outcomes
• Natural capital and ecosystem service monitoring solutions
• Environmental intelligence platforms that combine multiple datasets to support operational decision making
• Scalable approaches that reduce the cost and complexity of environmental monitoring and reporting
• Solutions that support investors, insurers, asset managers and other  end-user businesses to better understand environmental risks and opportunities
• Services that enable measurement, transparency and verification of environmental outcomes

The challenge

How can space-enabled technologies improve the detection, monitoring and verification of environmentally harmful emissions, to support environmental compliance, sustainability objectives and the transition to a lower-carbon economy?

The context

Emissions from energy, waste, agriculture and industrial activities remain a significant environmental challenge. Businesses require improved capabilities to identify emissions sources, monitor environmental performance, verify the effectiveness of mitigation activities and meet regulatory requirements.

Many emissions sources are geographically dispersed, difficult to access or span complex international supply chains. Space-enabled technologies can provide large scale and independent observations that complement conventional monitoring approaches, helping businesses improve transparency, accountability and decision making.

The solution

We are seeking to fund innovative, near to market commercial solutions that demonstrate how space-enabled technologies can improve the identification, monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions and environmental impacts for non-space UK businesses. Projects should involve an end-user business piloting a space-derived solution which is integrated into their operational decision-making.

Examples of relevant subsectors include energy, utilities, waste management, infrastructure, agriculture and industrial operations.

Solutions in scope:

Projects should involve space-derived solutions that provide a clear business benefit to the end-user. Examples of fundable projects may include but are not limited to:

• Monitoring, detection and verification of greenhouse gas emissions
• Industrial emissions monitoring and reporting tools
• Landfill emissions monitoring
• Agricultural emissions monitoring
• Solutions that support environmental compliance and regulatory reporting
• Decision support tools that help organisations prioritise emissions reduction activities
• Monitoring solutions that improve supply chain emissions transparency
• Applications that combine space-enabled technologies, complementary datasets and analytical approaches to deliver actionable environmental emissions monitoring and verification

The UK Space Agency will host an applicant webinar on 3 November 2026, 11:00 GMT to provide an overview of the competition, explain the challenge statements, outline the application process and answer participant questions.

There will also be an in-person Unlocking Space for Interoperable Data Services and Environmental Monitoring event, taking place at KPMG, Canary Wharf, London on Tuesday 27 October 2026, 9.30-12.30.

If you would like additional help to find a collaboration partner, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Space team.