National Highways Accelerating Low Carbon Innovation Programme
Support for your innovations that could make a real difference to how roads are built and maintained.
National Highways and Connected Places Catapult will offer funding for up to ten small to medium-sized businesses to develop innovative trials of net zero carbon approaches to road construction and maintenance.
Phase one of the National Highways Accelerating Low Carbon Innovation Programme will see winning UK-based firms awarded between £15,000 and £30,000 each to develop feasibility studies in collaboration with the strategic road operator and its tier-one suppliers.
Phase two will see further funding of up to £80,000 provided to support a selected number of organisations to trial their solutions.
Applicants are invited to put forward proposals that address at least one of three challenges:
- Development or application of alternative materials and techniques.
- Innovations that can improve asset management decision-making.
- Innovations which can contribute to reusing, redeploying and recycling construction materials and assets.
There is also an open challenge category for other ideas that can contribute to National Highways’ target of zero emissions in maintenance and construction by 2040.
Up to five larger tier-one organisations will also be selected to develop net zero solutions either on their own or in collaboration with an SME, but will not be eligible for funding as part of the programme.
The innovation accelerator seeks to take new materials and solutions described as being ‘low maturity’ and put them through a consistent, standardised process of prioritisation, feasibility and initial trialling, with the aim of assessing viability for wider testing and adoption.
Successful firms will be offered coaching and help with marketing strategy and investment support, as well as trial design training, deployment support, trial monitoring and evaluation. There will also be the chance to take part in a demonstration day for investors, industry and potential customers and ten months’ tailored business support.
The closing date for applications is Sunday 30 April 2023.
Application support webinar
On Tuesday 11 April Connected Places Catapult and National Highways will host an application support webinar. The webinar will cover the technical description of the challenge, details on the full application process, and a live Q&A session - register for the webinar now.
First published 30 March 2023