Funding to develop innovative trials of net zero carbon approaches to road construction and maintenance will be offered to up to ten small to medium sized businesses in a competition launched today by National Highways and Connected Places Catapult.

Phase one of the National Highways Accelerating Low Carbon Innovation Programme will see winning UK based firms awarded between £15,000 and £30,000 each to develop feasibility studies in collaboration with the strategic road operator and its tier one suppliers.

Phase two will see further funding of up to £80,000 provided to support a selected number of organisations to trial their solutions.

Applicants are invited to put forward proposals that address at least one of three challenges:

• Development or application of alternative materials and techniques;
• Innovations that can improve asset management decision-making;
• Innovations which can contribute to reusing, redeploying and recycling construction materials and assets.

There is also an open challenge category for other ideas that can contribute to National Highways’ target of zero emissions in maintenance and construction by 2040.

Up to five larger tier one organisations will also be selected to develop net zero solutions either on their own or in collaboration with an SME, but will not be eligible for funding as part of the programme.

Firms interested in putting themselves forward for the competition have until midnight on 30 April to enter.

The aim of the competition is to reach a wider pool of innovators, exploring firms with potential outside of National Highways’ existing supply chain, that promise to make a difference in lowering its carbon footprint.

The innovation accelerator seeks to take new materials and solutions described as being ‘low maturity’ and put them through a consistent, standardised process of prioritisation, feasibility and initial trialling, with the aim of assessing viability for wider testing and adoption.

Successful firms will be offered coaching and help with marketing strategy and investment support, as well as trial design training, deployment support, trial monitoring and evaluation. There will also be the chance to take part in a demonstration day for investors, industry and potential customers and ten months’ tailored business support.

Connected Places Catapult is pleased to invite you to celebrate the success of the Future of Air Mobility Accelerator 2022-23!

This will be an opportunity to meet key stakeholders in this sector, including the 9 innovators in this year’s cohort, and learn about the programme as a tool for accelerating innovations to market. We will showcase the programme-sponsored trials the cohort have delivered and celebrate their development thanks to the commercial support provided.

This event will take place in partnership with the Sustainable Skies Summit, which is also taking place at Farnborough International Conference Centre from the 17-18th April.

We will be hosting networking drinks and a dinner on the 18th April. Seats are limited, if you would like to attend the dinner please register your interest as soon as possible and we will get back to you if you have been successful.

The SME’s will be exhibiting at the show for the full two days and by registering to attend the dinner you are automatically registered for the Sustainable Skies Summit and will have access to the full two day show and all it has to offer!

Come and network with the cohort, programme partners and other key players and investors in the Air Mobility sector and hear about how, by collaborating across the industry, we can test, validate and accelerate these technologies to market successfully.

About the programme
The Future of Air Mobility accelerator is a challenge-led, 6-month programme in partnership with the Future Flight Challenge from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Alongside access to funding for trials and testbeds for demonstrations, the SMEs received mentorship and support from a consortium of experts, industry partners, academic institutions and regulatory bodies.

Our partners on this programme were Supernal, BAE Systems, GKN Aerospace and Heathrow; academic collaborators Cranfield University and Coventry University; and the UK Civil Aviation Authority and BSI.

Co-hosted by:

Sponsored by:

Connected Places Catapult and WeSprint invite you to a Future of Air Mobility insights event at the Urban Innovation Centre. Join us to hear industry insights from corporate, investor and technology leaders and to network with disruptive technologies in this space. We will have conversations around challenges within the sector with a focus on Future Airport & Vertiport Operations, Aviation Sustainability, Future Air & Space Traffic Management and Enabling End-to-End Mobility.

Who will attend?

At this event we expect a variety of stakeholders from the venture community to attend, including public, private and defence leaders from funds, fund of funds, venture studios, and technology providers, buyers and partners.

We will also be joined by representatives from the Future of Air Mobility Accelerator 2022-23 cohort who have been selected by a consortium of partners a cross industry, government, academia and regulation to test and scale new technologies, de-risking innovation in the marketplace.

We are pleased to welcome Supernal as the sponsor for this event. Supernal is Hyundai Motor Group’s Advanced Air Mobility company and are a valued industry partner on the Future of Air Mobility Accelerator programme.

We will also be joined by special guest Sanjeev Gordhan, General Partner at Type One Ventures

Please apply to attend and we will get back to you shortly if you have secured a spot! If you have any questions please contact natasha.giroux@cp.catapult.org.uk 

The scale of the challenge is clear. Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) are vital to industry and represent the backbone of trade and commerce worldwide. They are responsible for ensuring we have access to food, medicines, and goods of all kinds. 89% of domestic goods transported in the UK in 2020 were moved by road – the vast majority of which in HGVs. However, these vehicles produced 16% of UK domestic transport greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, and this needs to be reduced to zero by 2050.

The Pathway to Long Haul HGVs report was, itself, a culmination of extensive research and stakeholder consultation. Connected Places Catapult investigated the promising technologies for zero-emission road freight and started to build the business case for large scale trials and wider deployment. We consulted widely on state of the art and barriers to deployment.

Potential pathways to zero or low emission HGVs, produced by Professor Neville Jackson on behalf of Connected Places Catapult.

Within the Pathway document, we set out actions that we felt would enable the transition, which included:

• Setting a clear vision
• Funding and de-risking the transition
• Developing trust in the technology
• Deploying initial infrastructure
• Progressing regulations and standards
• Building the UK supply chain
• Enabling a sustainable market

The key recommendation was to gather evidence and mature the technologies through large-scale demonstrations operating in real-world conditions in the UK.

The Catapult’s business case work helped to secure £20m of funding to accelerate the rollout of zero-emission road freight, and following the publication of our study in March 2021, Innovate UK launched the Zero Emission Road Freight competitions, covering areas such as hydrogen fuel cells, electric road systems, supply chain technology, battery electric HGVs and supply chain technologies. The winners of these competitions were published in August 2021.

This funding enabled industry partners, such as vehicle manufacturers, infrastructure providers and technology companies, to come together with local authority representatives, freight operators and academics to develop detailed plans for the rollout of large-scale trials. The Catapult has been at the heart of these conversations, which have included representatives from the Department for Transport, Innovate UK, National Highways, National Grid, the Zemo Partnership, Logistics UK, the Road Haulage Association, and many others.

Further good news arrived earlier this year, as it was confirmed that major funding has been secured to deploy the significant infrastructure and large number of vehicles needed for successful trialling of zero-emission HGVS, in a real-world commercial context in the UK. Again, the Catapult’s technical and cost modelling inputs contributed to this funding award.

In addition, the Catapult has produced a suite of outputs to help inform partners and build robust foundations for the trials. The Catapult’s focus areas have included trial data strategy, export potential, safety and regulations, standards and market operations. This has included publication of the following reports which are available to download.

The purpose of this report is to document findings from a review of global standards and provide recommendations on a standardisation programme that would enable safe and effective roll out of Zero Emission Road Freight Trials and establishment of a longer-term sustainable market.

The purpose of this report is to examine the UK’s export opportunity in three emerging zero-emission HGV technologies: Hydrogen Fuel Cells, Battery Electric Vehicles, and Electric Road Systems.

The purpose of this report is to set out the safety activities that are required for safe on-road Zero Emission Road Freight Trials.

The purpose of this report is to set out findings from a review of the hazard landscape and key safety considerations for the proposed Zero Emission Road Freight Trials.

The purpose of this report is to identify what data needs to be collected from trials for evaluation purposes, to outline necessary data collection methods and to identify key stakeholders that would need to engage with this data collection approach.

The purpose of this report is to explore Connected Places Catapult decarbonisation projects across road, rail, maritime and aviation. To consider potential alignment, pre-empt interoperability challenges, highlight operational and implementation synergies and accelerate industry learning.

What’s Next?

Now that funding has been secured and foundations have been laid, the next step is to progress with the design of the demonstrator projects, and consider how such demonstrations can progress to wide-scale commercial deployments of the right infrastructure and vehicles to meet the needs of freight operators.

Meanwhile, the Catapult will be undertaking work on a host of enabling actions, as per the recommendations detailed within reports, to ensure technology can be deployed in a safe and secure manner. This will include investigations into standards, regulations, safety and security and UK export potential. If you would like to be involved in these discussions, please send an email to zeroemissionroadfreight@cp.catapult.org.uk.

Connected Places Catapult is looking forward to continuing on this exciting journey towards a cleaner future!

In an increasingly complicated world, where road haulage is struggling and petrol prices are spiking, the rail industry could offer a key part of the future transport solution our society is looking for. Expanding rail capability, and integrating rail better with other public transport systems, can meet societies changing needs in a more sustainable and accessible way. But this is not simple: the continuing impact of the COVID pandemic, along with the challenge of updating a large and complex legacy rail and station network have been hindering the impact and efforts to push forward with a long-term strategy.

Organised in collaboration with University of Bristol, this industry day aims to explore what the future of rail travel looks like in the near future; how it is possible to build a pipeline of activity that works cohesively, underpinning industry, government, academia, and the wider rail ecosystem more generally. During the event, we will investigate synergies across different transport systems as well as their integration. We will delve into the challenges and hurdles preventing them from coming together and working holistically. Finally, we will test societal readiness level, and question what needs to be done to make rail more accessible to all.

This event is intended for central and local government, industry, academia. The SMEs’ pitching sessions is particularly intended for Local Authorities across the country.

The government has committed to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2035. Using DfT uptake trajectories, there is predicted to be a critical mass of 40% Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) on the roads in 2035. However, effectively benchmarking policy interventions which could reduce emissions from the last mile sector is hindered by a lack of relevant data on emissions generated by last mile deliveries and travel patterns derived from logistic activities. There is a risk this lack of data could delay the uptake of zero emissions vehicles, modal shift and demand consolidation among logistics firms which would support the decarbonisation of the sector. Freight travel patterns are usually considered commercially sensitive and require a considerable effort in anonymisation and aggregation, which often hinders data sharing.

The Rural Innovation for Sustainable Environments (RISE) for Decarbonising Last Mile Road Freight project, jointly funded by SciTech and the Decarbonisation Strategy team at the Department for Transport, looked at ways to decarbonise road freight using 2021 mobile phone data to derive anonymised and aggregated travel patterns for last mile deliveries. It used this data to develop an integrated agent-based and emissions modelling tool to quantify emissions reduction from different interventions. The advantage of using MND is that it allows users to overcome the silos present in the Freight industry with logistic activities derived from all supply chains and for all last mile operators.

The RISE agent-based model represents a multimodal, transport model of the North East, where movements of people and goods are modelled. The model highlights bottlenecks and hot-spots with higher carbon emissions, which could help cities and towns develop strategies to meet their own transport decarbonisation targets. Scenarios were modelled for years 2021, 2031 and 2035 to explore the impact electrification, shipment consolidation and mode shift had on emissions generated from the last mile sector.

With a range of 25-100 miles and a capacity of 30-50 passengers, the Skybus concept could greatly complement existing transport modes.

This white paper highlights the potential of this technology including travel time savings, environmental benefits and reduced congestion. It presents the findings of initial demand and price modelling, as well as a competitive and benefits analysis, and presents recommendations for further analysis.

Connected Places Catapult worked closely with Skybus lead GKN as well as partners Pascall+Watson and Swanson Aviation Consultancy to assess the potential of Skybus.

The Future of Air Mobility accelerator (FoAM) is a challenge-led, 6-month accelerator programme powered by Connected Places Catapult and in partnership with the Future Flight Challenge from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The Catapult will select up to 12 SMEs to join the programme where they will receive support from a consortium of industry, government, academic and regulatory partners on the trial and testing of disruptive innovations. Through a focus on new and emerging challenges within the aviation ecosystem, FoAM will work alongside a consortium of partners to ensure that the programme tackles significant sector challenges and de-risks innovation in the marketplace.

The SMEs selected will have the opportunity to trial their solutions and will be guided through a bespoke programme tailored to their requirements. The programme will include investment readiness, technology and product development support, alongside introductions to aviation stakeholders and potential customers. These activities will be co-designed with the cohort of SMEs to support them in growing their businesses and adapting their propositions to the partners’ requirements.

This application support webinar will cover the overall programme vision, the journey of the programme to date, the programme challenges and guidance on the application process.

To find more about the programme and to apply, simply click here.

SMEs working on new aviation technologies get support to scale.

Alongside access to funding for trials and testbeds for demonstrations, the SMEs received mentorship and support from a consortium of industry partners, academic institutions, and regulatory bodies. These included: UK Civil Aviation Authority, British Standards Institute, AGS Airports, Heathrow Airport, GKN Aerospace, Supernal, Cranfield University, Coventry University, with access to the facilities at Snowdonia Aerospace. 

The programme demonstrated not only the art of the possible for new aviation technologies but how, by collaborating across the industry, we can test, validate, and accelerate these technologies to market successfully. The SMEs on the programme represented an array of technologies, from simulations of how flying taxis could integrate into the skies of London; to demonstrating new systems and technologies that power the future of flight; to supporting airports to achieve net zero through autonomy, airside asset monitoring and optimising energy usage.  

Connected Places Catapult delivered the programme in partnership with Plus X, where together they supported the SMEs through a bespoke programme tailored to their requirements. This included support on areas such as investment readiness, business modelling and product development, alongside introductions to aviation stakeholders and investors through networking events.  

The programme was co-designed with the SMEs to scale their businesses and adapt their propositions to the requirements of the partners and the wider industry. The funded trials together with mentorship provided, supported the cohort in raising over £5.5 million in investment, securing over £6 million in grant funding, securing new commercial clients, alongside creating over 65 new jobs whilst on the programme. 

The programme culminated with a Demo Day exhibition and VIP Dinner at Aerospace Bristol, where the SMEs showcased their achievements from their trials to a rich audience of industry, government, investor and policy leaders. Followed by an evening of fine dining and networking underneath the imposing Concorde. 

To learn more about the programme and the SMEs that were selected for cohort 1, make sure to watch the programme showreel video. 

Connected Places Catapult would like to thank all the partners and contributors involved. The team is excited to be scoping out the second programme to support more SMEs in this space, due to launch in Autumn 2022. 

If you are interested in being involved in the next programme, either as a partner or SME, please reach out to Alice Johnson, Accelerator Team Lead.

Find out more about our work in Aviation here.

Hear from the consortium here: