Funding Competition: SBRI – Zero Emission Generators, Demonstrator (UK)

This Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition is part of the Zero Emission Generators (ZE-Gen) programme which aims to support renewable energy based alternatives to fossil fuel generators.

This competition is delivered by Innovate UK on behalf of the Department for Science Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the Foreign Commonwealth and Development office (FCDO). The programme forms part of the Ayrton Fund and Transforming Energy Access (TEA) programmes.

The aim of the competition is to demonstrate the capability, applicability and scalability of integrated renewable alternatives to fossil fuel generators.

In this competition, your project must:

• be an integrated technology capable of replacing one or more fossil fuel generators
• be safe, flexible and appropriate to multiple applications
• plan to be installed in an ODA eligible country for testing and validation within 6 months from the project start date
• be affordable, reliable and low carbon
• target commercial, domestic, public sector or humanitarian use cases where fossil fuel generators are the only source of electricity or used as back up for an unreliable grid
• charge using AC or DC renewable generation technologies or from the grid as a backup
• be capable of storing energy
• be scalable

Project Size

• The projects can range in size between £500,000 and £1 million, inclusive of VAT.

Projects they will not fund

They will not fund projects that:

• are not original, not in scope and duplicate someone else’s work
• are covered by existing commercial agreements to deliver the proposed solutions
• will not contribute significantly to energy affordability, security and reduced carbon emissions
• do not address clean energy requirements
• are not Official Development Assistance (ODA) compliant
• do not take into account and plan to manage Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI)
• aim to improve fossil fuel generators
• use combustion technologies
• are inflexible and tailored to a specific use
• do not plan to manage the reuse and end-of-life processing of replaced fossil-fuelled generators
• do not propose an end-of-life plan for the renewable alternatives developed with this funding
• are large scale infrastructure projects, including industrial processes and utility scale solutions

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Projects must:
    • start on or after 1 April 2024
    • end by 31 March 2025
    • last between 6 to 12 months
    • involve prototyping, demonstrating or field testing of your innovation in an eligible official development assistance (ODA) country in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, or the Indo-Pacific
    • plan to be installed in an ODA eligible country for testing and validation within 6 months from the start of the project
    • ensure the ODA eligible country is the primary beneficiary of the innovation
    • be compliant with ODA funding
    • provide access for external impact verification
• Applicant
  • To lead a project, you can:
    • be an organisation of any size
    • work alone or with others from business, research organisations, research and technology organisations or the third sector as subcontractors
  • Organisations do not have to be registered in the UK to lead a project but must be a registered organisation. They will undertake viability and due diligence checks before awarding a contract.
  • This competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.
  • Contracts will be awarded to a single legal entity only. However, if you can justify subcontracting components of the work, you can engage specialists or advisers. The project and delivery against the project milestones will still be the responsibility of the main contractor.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.