Details of £140m ZERFT funding competition to decarbonise road freight announced
Tue 16 August 2022
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UK-registered organisations have until 12 October to apply for a share of up to £140 million to demonstrate battery and/or hydrogen fuel cell trucks. The funding comes as a result of the Government's commitment to a £200m, three-year comparative Zero Emission Road Freight (ZERFT) Demonstration programme, announced earlier this year, which aims to help decarbonise the UK’s freight industry.
Innovate UK (part of UKRI) will work with the Department for Transport to target the investment at innovation projects. The competition will focus on the largest heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) and aims to support the Government’s commitment to end sales of all new, non-zero emission HGVs by 2040 and enable continued cross border freight.
The Zero Emission Road Freight programme competition is funding demonstrations across three strands:
The aim of the three competitions is to kick-start the deployment of long-haul zero emission HGVs, with a multi-year demonstration of 40-44t battery electric trucks and/or hydrogen fuel cell trucks, including the development of the required business models for scalable deployment and a network of dedicated infrastructure.
Innovate UK says it is looking to fund up to five demonstrations covering all technologies that are in scope, across the three strands of this competition. "We are looking for projects that include multiple vehicle and infrastructure suppliers and that demonstrate a wide range of duty cycles with multiple freight operators. The programme will fund costs associated with project delivery, vehicle access and recharging or refuelling infrastructure during the period from when the project starts, up until 31 March 2025. All vehicles and infrastructure funded must be demonstrated for five years.”
Innovate UK says proposals must define the zero emission road freight demonstration which you will conduct. The demonstration will collect data to inform future policy decisions and infrastructure choices. The programme will consider battery-only or hydrogen-only proposals worth £20m-£90m. For a combined proposal (that is, a fleet including both types, which can be on different vehicles) it must be £30m-£140m. The funding can cover up to 80% of capital costs and up to 70% of R&D costs, depending on business size.
Projects must start by March 1, 2023 and claim the grant funding by 31 March 2025. Projects must be completed by March 31, 2030 and carry out all project work - and intend to exploit the results - in the UK.
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