Green ERA-Hub Biomass Production and Utilisation: 2026 Full Proposal (Closed Historical Reference)

This page is a historical reference, not an open grant listing. The official UKRI opportunity page marks the Green ERA-Hub: biomass production and utilisation full proposal opportunity Closed. The retained deadline, 25 March 2026, is the real closing date for the completed cycle. It is kept in the metadata because an archive entry should preserve the facts of the round it describes; historicalReference = true tells the site not to present that past date as a live application window.

The Green ERA-Hub website describes this as its third funding call. Its calls overview records the biomass call and earlier GEH calls, but does not announce a fourth biomass round. Do not infer a future deadline from this page. Anyone looking for a new Green ERA-Hub opportunity should check the official GEH calls page and the relevant national funder before preparing a new application.

Verified facts about the completed call

The two times matter because the call used two linked submission routes. The international consortium proposal had to go through the Green ERA-Hub submission portal by noon CEST. UK applicants also had to provide BBSRC with a PDF copy through the UKRI Funding Service by 4:00pm UK time. These were not interchangeable deadlines, and the official page says applications could not be submitted after the relevant cutoff.

What the call funded

The call focused on the utilisation of non-edible biomass or intermediates for industrial purposes, including cascade-use approaches. The scope covered biomass from agriculture, forestry, aquaculture, residues, side streams, industrial waste, and intermediates. The stated goal was not simply to find another feedstock. Projects were expected to develop novel or improved biotechnological approaches that could increase product value, improve sustainability or end-product quality, reduce waste, improve efficiency, or strengthen circular use of renewable resources.

Examples named by UKRI include bio-based chemicals and bio-based or biodegradable plastics, including applications involving textiles, paper products, and composite materials. The call also allowed related biomass pre-processing where it was needed to support the biotechnological approach. For BBSRC’s Topic B, relevant work could include innovative conversion technologies, metabolic engineering of microbial production strains and biological processes, optimisation of metabolic pathways, and bioinformatics for identifying or modifying pathways. Bioinformatics examples included modelling, machine learning, data standardisation, open repositories, remote sensing, Internet of Things systems, and artificial intelligence.

The official boundaries were important. The call did not fund Topic A work on plant breeding for improved crop, environmental, or soil resilience. It also excluded research on food, food ingredients, animal feed, and medical technologies. A proposal therefore needed a clear industrial or other high-value non-food utilisation case, not just a general interest in biomass or an agricultural study with no conversion objective.

Projects were expected to sit within Technology Readiness Levels 1 to 5 and advance the technology by at least one level. Industry engagement was strongly encouraged but not mandatory. The page also encouraged interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration, multi-actor approaches, cross-border collaboration, and life-cycle assessment or techno-economic analysis where appropriate. These were ways to make the research useful and credible; they did not turn the call into a requirement for every project to include an industrial partner or a complete commercial demonstration.

Eligibility and consortium structure

The full-proposal stage was restricted to applicants who had passed the pre-proposal stage and had been formally invited to continue. This condition came before the scientific fit. A strong idea could not enter the full-proposal route without that invitation.

UK applicants had to meet BBSRC eligibility requirements. UKRI lists higher education institutions, research council institutes, approved independent research organisations, and public sector research establishments among the organisations that are normally eligible, subject to the standard rules and the additional Green ERA-Hub documents. The non-UK partner countries named on the official page were Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, and Uruguay. Applicants outside the UK who were not based in a participating partner country were not eligible for this opportunity.

The consortium had to contain at least three eligible partners asking for funding from three different countries. At least two partners had to be from the participating EU member states or associated countries listed in the call. The BBSRC description adds the practical UK condition: applications had to include UK teams and at least two eligible partners from at least two different member-country co-funders. Each participating research organisation received funding from its own national agency, so every partner also had to satisfy its national eligibility and cost rules. If any applicant failed an eligibility condition, the full application could be rejected.

This structure made partner planning part of the application itself. The application form asked for details of consortium partners, including country, name, institute, job title, role, email address, and the relevant project co-lead. A coordinator could not treat partner information as a later administrative detail. The UK lead and the non-UK partners needed a shared workplan, clear responsibilities, and aligned national funding requests before submission.

How the completed application process worked

The main proposal had to be submitted through the Green ERA-Hub website. UKRI states that applications not submitted through the GEH website could not be retained for review. The international submission process and its call documents were hosted on the GEH submission portal. UK applicants had an additional UKRI requirement: submit a PDF copy of the application made through GEH using the UKRI Funding Service, in parallel with the GEH submission.

The UK project lead was also required to provide extra information in the Funding Service on ethical considerations in the use of animals in research, managing risks of research misuse, and Trusted Research and Innovation. The UKRI page specifically says applicants could not use the Joint Electronic Submissions system for this call. That distinction corrects the older page’s broad suggestion to treat the opportunity like a generic international grant.

For the UKRI part of the process, the official instructions were:

1. Confirm that the person starting the application was the project lead.
2. Sign in to, or create, a Funding Service account, select the organisation, verify the email address, and set a password.
3. Answer the Funding Service questions directly, saving work and uploading documents where requested.
4. Review the application in read-only view before sending it to the research office.
5. Send the completed application to the research office for checking.
6. Allow the research office to submit the checked application to UKRI.

The organisation setup step could take at least 10 working days if an institution was not already listed, according to UKRI. That instruction was especially relevant for an invited consortium working against a fixed international deadline. Institutional review time was separate from the GEH and BBSRC cutoffs, so teams needed to set their internal dates earlier.

Materials and questions to prepare

The GEH full-proposal form had to be completed online and uploaded as a PDF attachment in the Funding Service. UKRI set an 8MB maximum for that attachment and required the Funding Service number followed by “GEH full proposal form” in the file name. An attachment that failed those requirements could lead to rejection.

The Funding Service also asked for a public-facing summary, core-team information, and consortium-partner sections. The form included questions on ethical and responsible research and innovation, genetic and biological risk, research involving animals, overseas animal research, human participation, human tissues or biological samples, resources and cost justification, data management and sharing, facilities, and Trusted Research and Innovation. Not every project needed every supporting answer or template, but applicants had to respond to the questions that applied to their work and explicitly indicate when a topic did not apply.

For animal research, UKRI directed applicants to the relevant research-with-animals template and, where appropriate, overseas animal-research standards and checklists. For facilities, the facility had to come from the UKRI facility information list, and applicants needed prior agreement where required. The resources section called for justification of staff, substantial travel for fieldwork or collaboration, equipment over £25,000, exceptional consumables, facilities, infrastructure, and exception costs. The data section required a data-management plan aligned with UKRI’s data-sharing policy.

The completed package therefore needed more than a persuasive scientific narrative. It needed a coherent consortium, a defensible budget, a named route for the GEH PDF, the UKRI parallel submission, partner details, and the responsible-research information relevant to the project. A proposal about engineered microbes, for example, needed to address the genetic and biological risk question rather than assume that the scientific topic made the issue self-explanatory.

What a strong proposal needed to make clear

The best fit would have connected a defined biomass-utilisation bottleneck to a biological or biotechnological solution and a measurable improvement. The bottleneck might involve conversion yield, inhibitor tolerance, variable feedstock quality, product purity, waste generation, or the cost and environmental burden of pre-processing. The proposal then needed to explain why the chosen biological method could address that bottleneck within the project’s 24-to-36-month duration.

The international structure also needed a scientific reason. Each partner should have brought a capability, feedstock, facility, dataset, process, or regional condition that affected the research outcome. The workplan should have shown how results moved between partners, how methods were compared, and how the consortium would decide whether to advance a method by at least one technology-readiness level. A project divided into three unrelated national work packages would have been difficult to justify under a transnational call.

Sustainability claims needed evidence. The official scope emphasised land use, ecosystems, food security, circularity, waste minimisation, and local supply chains. A credible proposal would have stated which impacts it would measure and at what stage, rather than assuming that a renewable feedstock automatically produced a sustainable result. Life-cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis were encouraged where suitable to the research stage, and industry or other stakeholders could help test whether an output addressed a real need.

Archive guidance

There is no live application route through this page. The 2026 cycle closed on 25 March 2026, and the official GEH calls overview does not announce a next biomass-production-and-utilisation round. The deadline in the metadata is deliberately the real deadline for the completed cycle, not a guessed future date and not a prose value. The historicalReference = true field marks the page as an archive entry.

Researchers planning related work should use the official UKRI opportunity page, the Green ERA-Hub calls overview, and their national funding agency’s current guidance as the sources of truth for any future call. Do not reuse the partner list, deadline, funding limits, or application links here as evidence that a new round is open. A later call could change its topic boundaries, countries, funding rates, forms, or submission system. Until an official successor announcement exists, this page records what the closed third GEH call required and nothing more.