Carbon Innovation Fund

Overview

Update

Funding is split into three rounds:

• £1.4m of grants delivered in June 2022 to help partners tackle carbon emissions in food and farming. Read more about the partners they’ve funded around the globe.
• Round two grants, which opened for application in February 2023. They’ll award up to 10 grants of £75,000 to £200,000 to help UK-based partners reduce reliance on soy-based animal or fish feed and/or synthetic fertilisers. Applications to this fund are now closed.
• Round three grants: Round three of the Carbon Innovation Fund is now open for applications.

three-year, £3.5m Carbon Innovation Fund is a partnership between The Co-op Foundation and the Co-op. It’s funded through Co-op donations raised from the sale of compostable carrier bags in the UK and our own Co-op Foundation funds.   Apply for our fund now.

Round Three

Round Three of their Carbon Innovation Fund opens for applications at 12pm on Wednesday 14 February. They close for applications at midday on Friday 15 March.

In Round One of the fund, they funded a broad range of amazing initiatives working to reduce the environmental impact of the food and farming sector. Their second round focused specifically on innovative projects reducing the UK’s reliance on soy-containing feed and synthetic fertilisers.

For their third round of funding (CIF3), they want to focus on sustainable ways to create a thriving food and farming sector, without the need to damage important peat soils across the UK.

Why peat?

Co-op were the first UK supermarket to ban peat-containing compost from shelves in 2021, focusing on peat-free alternatives only. They know that to protect our environment, we need to find sustainable solutions to make sure damaging peatlands is no longer the norm.

In the UK alone, an estimated 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon are stored in peatlands. However, with almost 80% of UK peatland degraded, without any intervention to repair and preserve UK peatlands, their greenhouse gas emissions could exceed the equivalent of 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.

Peatland is often drained to grow crops and to allow livestock to graze. It is also often broken up to put the peat into compost as a growth aid. This is a major issue in terms of landscape degradation and biodiversity loss. Because of this, they want to focus our funding on ways to protect peatland while still providing the food we need to eat.

Who can they support?

They can award grants of £50,000 to £150,000 to initiatives which do one or more of the following:

• Reduce the amount of peat needed to grow crops within food supply chains
• Remove the peat needed to grow crops within food supply chains
• Sustainable management / looking after peat soils by using alternative, non-damaging farming methods for crops and/or livestock

Funding Aims

The fund will aim to protect peatland by reducing reliance on peat in food supply chains. To achieve this impact the fund will:

• Invest in testing and scaling up of alternative solutions to peat-free or peat-protecting food growing methods. This can include protecting peatland used for growing crops or for grazing livestock.
• Strengthen existing or create new networks and collaborations between farmers and other stakeholders that bring together solutions to common challenges
• Increase access to knowledge, techniques and skills for the UK farming community
• Increase farmers’ confidence, skills and knowledge to transition successfully into a new era of peat-free and/or peat-protecting growing
• Reduce costs for farmers, consumers and have positive impact on the environment through the adoption of alternative solutions to protect peatland
• Support work that may feel ‘risky’ for other funders e.g. because of the size of the organisation or because they have only conducted a pilot so far

What types of projects would they support?

They are looking to fund a range of different initiatives which can do one or more of the following:

• Reduce the amount of peat needed to grow crops within food supply chains
• Remove the peat needed to grow crops within food supply chains
• Sustainable management / looking after peat soils by using alternative, non-damaging farming methods for crops and/or livestock grazing

Funding

Applicants can apply for between £50,000 and £150,000 for their project.

They encourage applications on a ‘full cost recovery’ basis, i.e., including all associated core and overhead costs within the project budget.

Projects must start within six months of the grant being awarded, but thereafter can be spent over any time period.

They plan to fund 6-10 organisations from across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Applications will be assessed and shortlisted with others from the same nation/region. Often the England shortlist is the most competitive due to a higher number of applicants.

Who can apply?

Any type of organisation, of any size based in the UK is welcome to apply for the Carbon Innovation Fund. However, to be funded, they must:  

• Evidence that work does not lead solely to a private gain of wealth   
• Commit to open-source sharing of information, processes and learnings (i.e. work is not protected by intellectual property rights)  
• Be legally constituted, have a bank account in the organisation’s legal name, and at least two unconnected people on the board or management committee (by unconnected, they mean people who are not related or married)
• Be able to evidence a pilot of the work they plan to carry out for their funded project. The organisation does not need to have carried out this pilot themselves.  
• Carry out their proposed project in the UK

They prefer that the funded organisation has at least two unconnected people on the board or management committee.

They would recommend getting in touch with the team prior to applying if your organisation does not meet this criteria.

Co-op suppliers are welcome to apply for funding, providing they score well against the criteria listed below.

They welcome applications from organisations working in partnership, including projects joining up with statutory organisations and involving voluntary, public, and private sectors. One organisation must act as the lead applicant and legal recipient of the grant.

Funding criteria  

They have split their criteria into ‘essential’ and ‘desirable’.     

Essential:   

Awareness of how your work both reduces and emits greenhouse gasses (i.e. net GHG emissions)

By preserving peatland, they know your work will be reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protect an essential natural landscape. However, the work you deliver is likely to also emit greenhouse gases, for example through imports of raw materials or energy use. Therefore, they would like to see an awareness of net greenhouse gas emissions if possible. If you only have some of this information, please just provide what you can. You may want to detail plans to reduce greenhouse gases further in the future/mitigation plans - having this information will result in a stronger score for your answer.

Awareness of negative knock-on effects:

They are conscious that often in the quest to solve one problem, there is a risk of creating another. Aside from GHG emissions (above) they would like to get an idea of any adverse social or environmental consequences that you anticipate your work may have. They know that most projects will have some knock-on consequences and ask that you are open and honest in sharing these challenges alongside potential mitigation techniques. Applicants who can demonstrate strong mitigation plans are likely to score more highly.

Collaboration and co-operation:

You can demonstrate how you will co-operate with others. This could be at any or every stage of your project. They are most interested in the inclusion of the target audience in the work you do, for example involving farmers in the production of a peat-alternative, but it could also look like engaging an academic centre or research institute to gather data. Please note, it is your responsibility as the lead applicant to carry out necessary due diligence checks on any partners you may work with. Please get in touch if you need support to do this.

Sharing learning:

It is essential that your learnings are made open-source, and your project does not involve any patent / intellectual property that will lead to private gain. They are looking for projects with a robust and extensive dissemination plan to share their work widely. They would like to get an idea of your plan to share learning throughout and/or at the end of your project.
 

Desirable:   

Environmental benefits:

They would like to know how your project might contribute environmental benefits beyond a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and how you might measure this. For example, increased local biodiversity measured using the biodiversity metric calculator tool.

Human benefit:

They are interested in projects that also benefit people. This section could relate to the general community, or a specific group of people. For example, providing employment, volunteering opportunities or a reduced cost of inputs for farmers.

Scalability:

They would be interested to understand how your work could be scaled up to increase impact and benefit, perhaps within retail food supply chains. They would be especially interested to see how initiatives take affordability into account when scaling up.

Note: They can offer grants and peer learning networks for successful partners. For those that make the shortlist, but are ultimately unsuccessful, they hope to be able to share applications with other funders who might be able to support. They would ask permission to do so.   

See Guidelines for further details.