What is the value and duration of the Fellowship?
Green Future Fellowships are for 10 years in duration and provide awards of up to £3 million.
Who can apply?
There are no limitations on the career stage of applicants and applicants are not required to hold a PhD.
Green Future Fellowships can be led by individuals from non-engineering backgrounds or disciplines, but applicants must provide clear evidence of how their research or innovation promotes engineering excellence and supports engineering outcomes.
What's the application process?
Applications will be assessed through a two-stage application process:
- Stage one: expression of interest
- Stage two: invited application
For the expression of interest, applicants will be required to provide information about their proposed research or innovation under the following categories:
- Motivation for applying
- Innovation and novelty
- Position within current ecosystem
- Impact on net zero and climate resilience
- Scalability and potential for adoption
- Plans for commercialisation
- Economic benefits
- Long-term vision and sustainability
Applications will open for expressions of interest on 10 September 2024, with a closing date of 5 November 2024. The full guidance documents will be published when the call opens.
What are the key dates to know?
Applications for expression of interest will open 10 September 2024, with a closing date of 5 November 2024.
Shortlisted applicants will be invited to submit a full application in late January 2025, with applications due for submission by early April 2025.
Indicative dates for the next four rounds are listed below. Please note that these are subject to change, and we will update this page with specific dates in due course.
Round | Stage one opens | Stage two opens |
2025/2026 (Round 2) | September 2025 | February 2026 |
2026/2027 (Round 3) | September 2026 | February 2027 |
2027/2028 (Round 4) | September 2027 | February 2028 |
2028/2029 (Round 5) | September 2028 | February 2029 |
What are some example innovation areas or projects?
Some example innovation areas that Green Future Fellowships may explore are:
- Generating 24-hour, 365-day a year electricity without burning fossil fuels.
- Reducing the energy usage of vital infrastructure like telecoms networks, data centres and sewage processing.
- Recovering and using energy that would otherwise be wasted – such as the heating of roads in the sun, or heat lost from industrial processes.
- Building electronic memory that uses much less energy.
- Recycling and reusing metals and plastics more efficiently.
- Making future electronic devices without relying on mining of rare and expensive minerals.
- Creating new bacteria that will clean up pollution and waste faster.
- Developing robots to keep our offshore wind turbines running more reliably, whatever the weather.
- Making vehicles lighter so that they use less energy and accelerate faster without costing more.
Are there any restrictions on Technology Readiness Level (TRL)?
Applications can be for innovations at all stages of development from basic principles to proof of concept, demonstration and application, with no restrictions based on TRL. Applications must be centred around enabling and driving scalability of the proposed research or innovation. Through the Fellowship, the innovation should advance to the point where scalable real-world impact becomes achievable.