Call for Ideas: UK Space Agency Climate Services

To help foster climate services innovation the UK Space Agency are looking to provide small grants to help the UK develop business-viable ideas which use space data in a climate related application.

The monies can be used by the grant recipient or to access the information or resources needed to develop your ideas. This could be time to talk to new users of a service or to develop the information and data flows for example.

The projects (running from end January 2023 – end March 2023) will allow the development of a business viable presentation setting out the vision for the future, how the service could work, who are the core users and what is the route to market.

It is UKSA’s intention to launch a follow up call in Spring 2023 with greater funding for longer term projects for climate services development that have real potential, so the ideas developed in this call can be re-submitted as fuller business case plans in that call. Please note however there is no guarantee of follow on monies.

Themes

The UK Space Agency is looking to give grants to support:

• the use of space data in a climate-related application
• new or novel ideas in the pre-commercial stage.
• collaboration with another organisation/entity such that the work/skills/data needed should not all be readily available within one organisation. For example, you might buy access to data or consultancy time.
• ideas that can be developed into a business viable idea by the end of March
• opportunities for discussion the user community such that the new climate service is needed/wanted.

UKSA have scoped the below example themes alongside Space4Climate. Climate services can cover any number of themes across mitigation, adaptation and resilience etc. For example:

• land use
• biodiversity
• carbon
• energy
• agriculture
• health
• water management
• education
• natural disaster response

Projects cannot work in areas that are in active conflict, and any travel to overseas must comply with FCDO recommendations.

UK Space Agency has up to £80,000 to be split between successful applicants.

You must ensure that your total costs of any one proposal do not exceed £10,000. The £10,000 is inclusive of VAT. Funding will be managed through the UK Space Agency Low Value Grant Funding Agreement. Match funding is usually not applicable in this circumstance.

There are no restrictions on the type of organisations / individuals who can apply, but you must have a UK bank account and pass due diligence checks.

The application submission deadline is 11:59pm on 30 December 2022.

UKSA are open to informal chats before deciding whether to submit a bid, but informal conversations will need to be completed by 5pm on 20 December 2022. Please contact UKSA via email to arrange this. uksaeo.climateservices.calls@ukspaceagency.gov.uk