Deadline Date: May 8, 2026
The Ideas Elevator for Maritime Decarbonisation is requesting applications to identify and develop early-stage concepts that can contribute to cleaner, more efficient, and lower-emission maritime transport systems.
Focus areas, of the programme include accelerating early-stage innovation in clean maritime technologies, supporting maritime decarbonisation, aligning innovations with national sustainability, accessibility, and efficiency goals, strengthening the long-term transport innovation pipeline, diversifying innovative solutions for transport challenges, enabling disruptive ideas, fostering collaboration between academia, startups, and industry, de-risking early hypotheses, and building evidence-based solutions for maritime decarbonisation.
The programme is delivered by Connected Places Catapult in partnership with the Department for Transport and is focused on identifying low-technology readiness level concepts that demonstrate theoretical grounding and potential for future development in transport decarbonisation.
Participants selected for the programme receive expert feedback on concept development, support in creating pitch materials, and pitch training to prepare for presentation to a panel of government, industry, and innovation experts. Selected ideas also have the opportunity to progress toward future Transport Research and Innovation Grants funding.
The programme is structured in two phases, beginning with the selection of up to 15 projects that will develop their ideas into concept notes, receive pitch support, and present at a Pitch Day in July 2026 after a three-week preparation period. Following this, up to five projects will be shortlisted for interviews later in the year, with successful candidates eligible to receive up to £45,000 to further develop their solutions through a five-month project in 2027.
The programme focuses on five key challenge areas, including enabling safe and scalable adoption of future maritime fuels, reducing emissions through improved vessel operations, preparing ports and infrastructure for a low-carbon future, developing whole port baseline systems including zero-emission infrastructure, and creating trusted maritime evidence to support early decarbonisation decisions and investments.
Eligible applicants include UK-registered small and medium-sized enterprises with fewer than 250 employees, as well as researchers employed by UK-based universities. Proposed solutions must be at Technology Readiness Level 1 to 2, focusing on very early-stage innovation concepts.
For more information, visit Connected Places Catapult.
