A government backed contest, opening for applications in March, will give companies the chance to win a share of a £4.5 million funding pot.
In a plan to help scale up solutions for the domestic retrofit sector as the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) has launched the competition to help consortia radically improve their retrofit products to bring about greater take-up in the market with projects expected to range in size from £500,000 to £3 million.
TSB writes:
There are around 20m homes in the UK in need of varying degrees of energy efficiency refurbishment. This new market is estimated to be worth £200bn over the next 40 years. This competition will help businesses to unlock this market by delivering a package of retrofit measures at competitive prices, and with guaranteed levels of performance. To achieve this requires a significant re-working of the survey and specification process together with an innovative approach to supply chain relations, customer-focused business models and low-cost, trusted energy monitoring to ensure the retrofitted properties perform as expected. Projects may also cover after-care arrangements and development of long-term relationships, even to providers taking responsibility for household bills.
Bidding organisations will need to demonstrate how they will take the findings from the research and apply it to future programmes of retrofit work.
We expect projects to range in size from total costs of £500k to £3m, although we may consider smaller projects. Proposals must be collaborative and business-led. We expect to fund mainly industrial research projects in which business partners will generally attract up to 50% public funding for their project costs (60% for SMEs).
This is a two-stage competition that opens for applicants on 4 March 2013. The deadline for registration is noon on 10 April 2013 and the deadline for expressions of interest is at noon on 17 April 2013.
Innovate UK Article: LINK
