The aim of this competition is to support the creation of credible industrial decarbonisation plans for local industrial clusters. Local clusters can be made up of groups of closely located, emitting industrial sites and other stakeholders. The funding is intended to increase collaboration between organisations, strengthen decarbonisation planning skills and enable development of organisational structures for place-based decarbonisation.

Your proposal must:

• demonstrate the regional and national significance of your project
• demonstrate what networks, stakeholders and audiences will contribute to the project and what information will be disseminated through a dissemination plan
• develop a strong understanding of emissions data and developing pathways to reach Net Zero by 2050
• consider the wider cross-economy decarbonisation scenarios
• capture existing activity in the cluster on industrial decarbonisation
• identify the key industrial decarbonisation project options required to achieve carbon abatement in the local cluster, for example, common infrastructure and site-specific
• identify barriers and enablers to industrial decarbonisation in the local cluster
• analyse decarbonisation benefits and costs, including emissions, economic, environmental and social impact, and quantifying these where possible
• identify key industrial decarbonisation stakeholders, plans for further engagement and future development of organisational structures designed to implement content of plan
• demonstrate how the project will lead to decarbonisation of your local industrial cluster after the funding from this competition ends in March 2025

It is the responsibility of applicants to get independent subsidy control and State aid legal advice.

We want to fund a portfolio of projects, across this competition, based on:

• geographical location
• the range of industries
• the range of technologies
• project cost and funding available
• project scale and replicability
• environmental impacts
• project timescales
• alignment with and contribution to wider cross-economy decarbonisation, and decarbonisation of other clusters
• other government funded projects in the region of the cluster, for example projects funded through the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge (IDC)
• stakeholder engagement
• alignment with other government decarbonisation and place-based policies and funding

Specific themes

It is recognised that local industrial clusters will be at different stages of development but we would anticipate that your local cluster decarbonisation plan would include:

• technology options
• emissions data
• commercial arrangements
• stakeholders
• funding and finance
• knowledge dissemination, in the form of a dissemination plan demonstrating how learning from the project will be gathered and disseminated to other industrial clusters and dispersed sites
• the economic, social and environmental impact of decarbonising the local cluster
• existing decarbonisation activities
• barriers and enablers
• geographic coverage
• timelines
• exploitation plan

Research categories

We will fund feasibility studies as defined in the guidance on categories of research.

Projects we will not fund

We are not funding projects that are:

• single industrial facilities
• focused on deployment activities
• pre-FEED (front end engineering design) or FEED studies
• not primarily focused on industrial decarbonisation, however plans that are primarily focused on industry, but which can show synergies with decarbonisation of other sectors, for example, waste, power or transport, will be considered
• considered to duplicate the scope of IDC Clusters, however plans that are not covered by the IDC clusters, but which can show how their plans will connect to the clusters, will be accepted

More information on the term ‘industry’ and on the IDC clusters can be found in the supporting information section of this competition brief.

We cannot fund projects that are:

• dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
• dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product