Apply for Zero Emission Vessels and Infrastructure 2: Energy Efficiency (ZEVI 2)

Apply for Zero Emission Vessels and Infrastructure 2: Energy Efficiency (ZEVI 2)

Key details

What this opportunity is and what it funds

This competition is part of the UK Shipping Office for Reducing Emissions (UK SHORE) pathway and is aimed at accelerating clean maritime innovation in the UK. The funding stream is explicitly for developing, deploying, and operating innovative clean maritime technologies in realistic operational settings. The Energy Efficiency strand is the third strand of the round and targets technologies that can improve how vessels and related maritime infrastructure use energy, with the requirement that projects remain commercially meaningful and technically robust.

The headline is straightforward: this is a large-scale grant for consortia led by UK-registered businesses that can prove a credible build-to-demonstration pathway. The amount and timeline are designed for projects that can scale beyond lab pilots into real vessel operations, shore infrastructure, and port-facing systems. In practical terms, this is suited to teams that can handle industrial implementation and sustained operational risk, not one-off research outputs with no deployment plan.

The competition sits in a bigger context. The UK Government’s clean maritime objective is clear in this call language: real-world decarbonisation, not hypothetical models. The language repeatedly emphasises representative operational use, measured impacts, and post-project learning for wider UK deployment. Projects are expected to generate evidence that can survive scrutiny during a long demonstration period and after funding has ended.

Who this is designed for (and who it is not)

This is primarily for UK organisations in maritime and adjacent industrial ecosystems that can deliver both technology development and deployment under commercial constraints. Suitable applicants usually include:

• Maritime technology SMEs and scale-up firms with technical solutions for energy reduction.
• Vessel operators, manufacturers, shipyards, and owners willing to co-develop operational demonstration.
• Ports, harbours, offshore installation operators, and infrastructure owners in partnerships.
• Public-sector and third-sector collaborators who can contribute facilities, operating knowledge, or integration support.
• RTOs and related organisations that can help convert technical plans into credible execution.

This is not suitable for:

• Solo, purely academic-led applications without a business lead.
• Projects that focus on non-operational improvements without deployment intent.
• Proposals that do not clearly align with the three-year full operational demonstration model.
• Commercial activity plans without evidence of UK-based exploitation of outputs.

Because this is a collaboration-only competition, a lead applicant must be a UK registered business and must work with at least one other eligible UK registered collaborator. That makes it a consortium-style application in spirit, even when the commercial footprint is small.

Eligibility deep dive

The opportunity sets a clear set of hard constraints. You should treat these as mandatory gates before writing a line in the narrative.

Lead applicant and consortium rules

• Lead must be a UK registered business of any size.
• Lead must collaborate with other UK-registered organisations.
• Academic institutions cannot lead this competition.
• You must submit applications to the correct strand; out-of-scope submissions are ineligible.

Project and funding thresholds

• Total eligible project costs: £6m to £60m.
• Grant funding request can be up to £30m total, with any single participant receiving no more than £20m.
• Project must start by 1 April 2027.
• All grant funding under this competition must be claimed by 31 December 2029.

Deployment and duration expectations

Applications in this competition are judged against a full technical and operational timeline:

• Build and development must fit within the project window and end with a usable outcome by the application’s funded timeline.
• Projects then require a three-year unfunded demonstration period with substantial operational use.
• Demonstration is expected to reflect genuine commercial operational profiles.

The three-year demonstration requirement is critical. Any costed plan that assumes short-term visibility only, or that can only be validated in simulation, is likely to be rated weakly.

Intersections with other opportunities and application caps

The rules include cross-competition application governance:

• You can only lead one application per competition across the three strands.
• You may act as collaborator or subcontractor in a limited number of further projects depending on lead status.
• Exceeding collaboration limits can make an application ineligible, typically with recent submissions invalidated first.

This is designed to prevent over-subscription while preserving ecosystem participation. It is especially important for active players with multiple parallel bids in maritime clean-technology funding rounds.

What counts as “energy efficiency” in this strand

The competition page identifies multiple energy efficiency routes and does not limit innovation to one technology family. Practical target areas include:

• Vessel energy efficiency technologies such as hydrodynamic improvements and propulsion-adjacent systems.
• Smart energy management and on-vessel or shoreside solutions that increase efficiency without replacing the core concept.
• Operational improvements that are inseparable from technical measures and can be tested in real use.

At the same time, exclusions are explicit for out-of-scope proposals, including:

• Conventional fossil-fuel combustion efficiency projects unless tied to strict exceptions.
• Battery-electric vessel work that is not 100% battery electric.
• Projects that are essentially maintenance or non-innovative iterations of existing commercial practice.
• Submarine-focused or military-focused proposals (where these are treated as out of scope).

This matters because many applicants over-index on technical novelty and under-index on deployment relevance. The scorecard here is practical delivery and proven operational benefit.

Finances, grant rates, and budget structuring

The competition has a clear cost architecture:

• Total eligible project costs define the base.
• Industrial research and experimental development lines have different rates.
• Micro and small firms get up to higher intervention rates in early-stage activity than large firms.
• Capital costs are only eligible if directly tied to project outcomes and the competitive programme intent.

The page also states grant rates tied to organisation size:

• Industrial research: up to 70% (micro/small), 60% (medium), 50% (large)
• Experimental development: up to 45% (micro/small), 35% (medium), 25% (large)

This makes budget writing highly strategic for consortiums where multiple partners have different legal and economic profiles. In many cases, balancing who carries costs across partner types directly affects total grant request efficiency and compliance.

Practical budget rules to watch

• You cannot rely on future-cost overruns to increase grant values after submission.
• Funding will not be increased if project costs rise.
• If the total costs or grant request go outside allowed boundaries, you must explicitly request exception approval early and within the stated deadline window.

If your consortium includes both commercial and research organisations, you must account correctly for different treatment of eligible costs and likely split of non-economic activity.

Application process and timeline

The process is delivered via the Innovation Funding Service (IFS), and this is not a lightweight form-filling exercise.

Typical submission phases

1. Application building: establish lead account, define consortium, assign roles, and invite partners.
2. Project details completion: describe scope, summary, public description, and confirm registration details.
3. Application questions: scored section with evidence requirements, permits/licensing assumptions, export and security considerations, and demonstration planning.
4. Finances and impact: complete the costed package and impact justification.
5. Submit by deadline and reopen if needed: applications can be reopened and resubmitted before deadline.
6. Interview phase and scoring: shortlisted projects provide interview materials and may submit written responses to assessor feedback.
7. Notification and post-award setup: setup portal, reporting, and setup of project infrastructure.

Key timeline points (official)

• Competition closes: 16 September 2026, 11:00am UK time.
• Invite to interview and interview panel in late 2026.
• Applicants notified in early 2027.
• Project start from 1 April 2027.

Because grant windows are tied to later milestones, your application should not be written as if all activity is immediate. It must be staged across build, operation, demonstration, reporting, and evidence phases.

Required application sections

The application uses four major sections:

1. Project details
2. Application questions
3. Finances
4. Project Impact

In the questions section, a key operational rule appears repeatedly: no website URLs should be included in answers. It is treated as an ineligibility risk if ignored.

What to submit and what to prepare in advance

If you are preparing a serious ZEVI 2 energy efficiency bid, begin with the evidence architecture, not the prose.

Before application: prep stack

• UK Business Registry evidence for all consortium parties.
• Evidence of collaboration model, including clear lead/collaborator roles.
• Project work breakdown with clear ownership of each work package.
• Risk register drafted before writing application questions.
• Export-control, permits, and legal pathway assessment.
• Demonstration plan with operational profile assumptions: location, usage, utilization, maintenance, and staffing.
• Clear measurement plan: emissions outcomes, performance uplift evidence, and economic benefit claims.

During application: content priorities

• Project summary: concise innovation statement and evidence of feasibility.
• Scope answer: one of the most binary scoring points. If this is ambiguous, ineligibility risk rises immediately.
• Question 10 and related scoring items: demonstration timeline and operations must be realistic.
• Project impact: economic case, UK exploitation, IP anchoring, regional and sector impacts.

In this call, weak responses often fail at two points: lack of quantification and weak operational realism. A technically strong concept without a credible three-year real-world utilization model tends to be downgraded.

Common reasons applications get rejected

Use this as a checklist before submission:

1. Wrong strand

   • This is an Energy Efficiency strand. If your proposal is primarily infrastructure build unrelated to vessel energy efficiency, or an alternative fuel concept without clear energy efficiency elements, your application may be out of scope.

2. Invalid lead partner model

   • Academic-only lead, or lead without collaborative registration, is non-compliant.

3. Non-compliant cost structure

   • Ineligible costs (including contingency misclassification, unclear capital treatment, and unsupported cost categories) are often flagged in assessment.

4. Overlooking grant request ceiling logic

   • Project request and participant allocation caps are strict. Budgets that do not respect these can become ineligible before quality assessment.

5. Demonstration assumptions are not operationally credible

   • Claims such as “we will deploy later” without a realistic vessel utilisation and sustainment model fail scoring.

6. **Insufficient UK-value argument

   • The competition expects clear UK economic anchoring and post-project exploitation pathways.

7. Missing deadlines

   • Requests for exceptions and scope clarifications need to be made before stated cutoffs.

Step-by-step readiness checklist for strong submissions

4-week planning template

Weeks 1–2: Scope lock

• Confirm strand match.
• Confirm lead partner registration and partner list.
• Finalize demonstration concept and operational route map.
• Decide whether project is mainly vessel-system, infrastructure, or hybrid.

Week 3: Evidence lock

• Build cost model against eligible cost rules.
• Draft project narrative around measurable emissions reduction.
• Produce draft IP and UK exploitation statement.

Week 4: Application hardening

• Ensure all sections have evidence references.
• Verify no ineligible costs remain.
• Confirm that no prohibited URLs are included in scored responses.
• Reopen/review before deadline, resubmit final clean version.

Frequently asked questions

Does this suit pre-seed teams without prior demonstrations?

It can, but only if the proposal has a clear path from development to sustained three-year demonstration. Very early concepts without build/deployment capacity are usually weaker than they appear at concept stage.

Can we include non-UK partners?

Non-funded partners can be included, and in some cases may work on the project. You must still meet lead/collaboration compliance and keep the lead/commercial structure eligible.

Can a consortium include RTOs and universities?

Yes, as partners or collaborators in many cases. Leads still need to be UK registered businesses.

Is grant funding available for all eligible costs?

No. Costs are bounded by cap rules and intervention rates by firm size and activity type. The competition page provides explicit percentages for industrial research and experimental development.

Can one project apply to multiple ZEVI 2 strands?

No. The competition requires correct strand selection, and submission to the wrong strand can be rejected.

Official links and direct sources

• Official UKRI opportunity page: https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/zero-emission-vessels-and-infrastructure-2-energy-efficiency
• Competition details on Innovation Funding Service: https://apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/2436/overview/97d03e1a-7760-4939-97b4-4f230c84a6aa
• Innovate UK contact support: [email protected]
• Phone: 0300 321 4357 (Mon–Fri, 9am–12pm and 2pm–5pm UK time)

Final recommendation

If your organisation can support a true deployment-grade maritime efficiency program through build, operation, and long-horizon evidence generation, this is a strategically strong call. The pot is large, but this is not a grant for exploratory ideas alone. It is for teams who can carry a full innovation-to-demonstration lifecycle and then deliver usable, measurable outcomes for UK maritime competitiveness.