£5.5M of grant funding ring-fenced for low carbon reasearch and development

Do you need funding for a research or development project? If so, grant funding could be your answer.

The East of England Development Agency’s (EEDA) extensive grant funding programme includes £5.5m from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) that is ring-fenced to invest in the Research and Development (R & D) of technology-led solutions for a low carbon future.

As with the core programme, grants range from £5,000 to £250,000 and are awarded to entrepreneurs or companies wishing to:

• develop a prototype of an innovative product or process
• investigate the technical and commercial feasibility of innovative technologies
• develop a pre-production prototype of a new product

Public sector funding is sometimes overlooked as people are put off by perceptions of lengthy timescales, bureaucracy and the need for match funding. However, research conducted at the end of 2009 reinforced the benefits of grant funding to businesses, namely:

• grant funding plugged a funding gap that had previously hampered progress
• many R & D projects resulted in new intellectual property, increased productivity and profitability
• increased investment in R & D enables companies to draw down tax credits
• it was often the case that businesses improved their chance of levering funding from other sources because the grant application process acts as a form of due diligence that helps to de-risk the investment

With limited funding options currently available for business, the EEDA/ERDF grant funding, specifically for low carbon innovation, is proving popular. Grants have been awarded to fund research and/or development of a wide range of environmental technologies from green welding and bio-fuels to street lighting and plumbing.

Trevor Conway, head of EEDA’s Access to Finance team says:
“Grant funding is effectively FREE money. There is inevitably a certain amount of form filling within the application process but the benefits to the recipients often extend beyond the R & D project, to boost investment and growth prospects.

The East of England is home to many exciting innovators so we look forward to seeing more applications come forward for funding to test and/or prove ground-breaking low carbon technologies.”
EEDA’s green grants panel meets every fortnight to evaluate applications, and they’ve already approved £1m of funding so far this year. So don’t delay, visit the Grant for Research and Development pages today.
The first step is to complete a short pre-application to establish your eligibility. This only takes a few minutes to complete and applicants will receive feedback at the earliest opportunity but certainly within 3 days.

For more information about the grants available and to download a pre-application form, please go to http://www.bizmapeast.co.uk/low_carbon.aspx