TSB Launches £4.5m Fund

Aim of the fund: A major market opportunity exists for the development of products and services that make better use of material resources.  The fund aims to encourage industrial end-users to work with supply chains and innovators to create new products and services for a sustainable economy.  These products will either have reduced environmental impact compared to current alternatives, and/or will be less dependent on the use of strategic materials.

Projects: Proposals should be collaborative and led by a business, and must clearly present the benefits to business.   A key feature of this competition is that the project activities must be focused on delivering a 'specification of an unmet need', provided by the end-user. Projects are expected to have a maximum duration of 24 months.

Funding available: Up to £500k is available and can represent a maximum of 50% of the project cost.

Timescales:
• Fund opens on  03 October 2011
• Stage 1: Applicant submits an Expression of Interest by 09 Nov 2011 - (must register by 02 Nov)
• Stage 2: Selected applicants will be asked to submit a Full - Application by 11 January 2012
• Applicants will be informed of the outcome of their application by 10 - February 2012.

The TSB Resource Efficiency Strategy 2009-2012 describes four approaches that they believe are important contributors to a resource-efficient, low carbon economy.
Successful applications may use one or more of these approaches:
Substitution: the use of alternative substances that have lower environmental impact or present reduced materials risk, or the redesign of a component so that it requires fewer materials and/or assembly steps.

Closing the loop: recycling, remanufacture and re-use; elimination of dispersive losses of material throughout the product lifecycle. Where practicable, materials at the end of the product life should be returned to productive use at a similar economic value, ie., avoiding downcycling.

Dematerialisation: a range of approaches applied to products, systems or services to decrease the total mass of material deployed to deliver a unit of service or customer benefit. This could include the use of multifunctional materials, light or right – weighting approaches, service models that allow the same resource to be shared by many users, or the extension of product lifetime to improve resource efficiency on a per use basis.

Reducing energy intensity on a life cycle basis: achieving the same effect or customer benefit using less energy over the lifecycle.

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