Zero Emission Flight Demonstrator Round One: Closed £8 Million UK Grant Competition

The Zero Emission Flight Demonstrator Round One was a closed Innovate UK competition, jointly operated with the Department for Transport (DfT). It offered a minimum of £8 million in grant funding for projects that could demonstrate zero-emission-capable commercial flight in the UK. The official UKRI opportunity page now labels the competition Closed, and the linked Innovation Funding Service (IFS) brief says that the competition is no longer accepting applications.

This page is therefore a historical reference, not a live invitation to apply. The official pages show the dates and requirements for Round One, but they do not announce a next round or provide a current application window. Do not treat the date below as an upcoming deadline.

At a glance

The UKRI page lists £8,000,000 as the total fund. The IFS brief describes the allocation as a minimum of £8 million and says that the amount was conditional on receiving a sufficient number of high-quality applications. Awards were grants, not loans or prizes, and the competition could not necessarily fund every proposal that passed an assessment threshold.

What Round One was intended to support

The central aim was to demonstrate zero-emission commercial-capable flight in the UK. The brief was broader than developing an aircraft component. A project had to progress one or more of four areas:

• flight operations for zero-emission aircraft;
• ground-handling and infrastructure technologies needed to handle zero-emission aircraft;
• standards and a regulatory environment for zero-emission commercial flights; or
• the evidence base on the feasibility of zero-emission aircraft for commercial aviation.

The DfT interest was specifically in aircraft operations that could eventually offer passenger or goods services on a broadly like-for-like basis with current air services. The competition was built around evidence from operations, infrastructure, standards, regulation, and commercial feasibility. Projects with flying demonstrators were prioritised, and the brief said that a flight-demonstrator project could be funded ahead of an infrastructure-only project even if the infrastructure proposal scored higher.

The competition also connected successful feasibility and industrial research projects with the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s Hydrogen Challenge regulatory sandbox initiative. That requirement matters because a credible zero-emission aviation project needs more than a prototype or a business case. It needs a route for gathering evidence, securing permissions, and showing how operations could work safely in the UK aviation system.

What the competition did not fund

Round One was not a general aircraft-technology competition. The IFS brief specifically excluded on-aircraft technologies such as propulsion technologies. It also excluded future-of-flight technologies such as electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, uncrewed aircraft, and drones. Commercial spaceflight, including high-altitude platforms, was outside scope.

The competition did not fund hydrogen production, transport, or storage outside aviation environments. It also excluded cross-sector hydrogen infrastructure without a clear aviation focus and proposals that offered financial support for commercial operations. A technically strong project could still have been ineligible if its primary work sat in one of those excluded categories.

That boundary is useful when reading the old announcement. “Zero emission flight” did not mean every battery, hydrogen, propulsion, drone, or space project. The eligible work had to connect to commercial-capable aircraft operations, airport handling, standards and regulation, or evidence needed to make commercial aviation feasible.

Eligibility for the closed round

The competition was open to UK registered organisations, but only as collaborations. The lead organisation had to be a UK registered business of any size. An academic institution could not lead and could not apply alone.

Collaborating UK organisations could include businesses, academic institutions, charities, not-for-profit organisations, public sector organisations, and research and technology organisations. To count as an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation had to apply for funding, explain the rationale and structure of the collaboration, and ensure that no single partner accounted for more than 70% of total eligible project costs.

Any funded organisation had to carry out its project work in the UK and intend to exploit the project results from or in the UK. The brief also allowed non-funded partners, including partners based in the EU or elsewhere, where they brought their own funding. Those partners’ costs had to be entered as £0 in IFS and did not count toward eligible project costs, although the application still had to describe them in the finance answer.

Subcontractors were allowed. UK subcontractors had to be selected through the applicant’s usual procurement process. Overseas subcontractors required a specific case explaining why a UK contractor could not be used; a lower price alone was not sufficient.

The same organisation could lead or collaborate on multiple applications if it could demonstrate that it had the capacity to deliver them. Organisations that were not leading could collaborate on any number of applications. This made capacity, partner roles, and reporting arrangements important parts of the proposal rather than administrative details to resolve after submission.

Project categories, size, and duration

Applicants could propose either a feasibility study or an industrial research project.

For a feasibility study, total eligible project costs had to be no more than £250,000. The project had to last between 12 and 24 months, start by 1 August 2026, and end by 31 July 2028.

For industrial research, total eligible project costs had to be no more than £5 million. The same 12-to-24-month duration applied, with a start by 1 August 2026 and an end by 31 July 2028. Under the Research, Development and Innovation Streamlined Route rules, no more than £3 million per enterprise could be awarded as a grant.

For commercial or economic activity, both categories used the same maximum funding rates: up to 70% of eligible costs for a micro or small organisation, up to 60% for a medium-sized organisation, and up to 50% for a large organisation. Research organisations carrying out non-economic activity could share up to 30% of total eligible project costs. Within that limit, the brief allowed up to 100% of eligible costs for an RTO, charity, not-for-profit, public sector organisation, or research organisation, and up to 80% of full economic costs for a Je-S-registered academic institution, subject to the stated cost rules.

Eligible themes by research category

For feasibility studies, the brief expected detailed studies into operating commercial zero-emission flights from UK airports. Eligible work could include plans, business cases, and investment cases for follow-on decisions; analysis of the benefits and risks for UK businesses committing to future zero-emission aircraft; and meaningful data that could accelerate certification or inform investment decisions elsewhere in aviation. Successful feasibility projects were expected to publish findings so that the wider UK aviation sector could benefit from the evidence.

For industrial research, the scope was more operational. A project could operate a zero-emission aircraft demonstration on an A-to-B route within the UK by July 2028. It could demonstrate refuelling, take-off, and landing using low-carbon hydrogen or electricity at a minimum of two UK airports while undertaking multiple A-to-B flights. It could also demonstrate low-carbon hydrogen or electricity in airside ground-support equipment where that equipment enabled zero-emission aircraft handling.

Other industrial research themes included operating a fixed-wing zero-emission aircraft capable of replicating an existing commercial passenger or freight flight, developing standards for airport handling of zero-emission flight, securing the regulatory permissions needed for UK A-to-B demonstration flights, and reporting benefits for passengers, airports, and airlines. These requirements show why the opportunity was aimed at integrated operations and evidence, not an isolated laboratory component.

How the application worked

The competition is closed, so these are the steps used for the archived Round One process rather than instructions for submitting now.

The lead applicant first had to read the IFS competition brief and the general guidance on applying for a competition. It then had to decide which organisations would work on the project and invite the relevant people into IFS. Each partner was responsible for entering its own project costs and completing its Project Impact questions after accepting the invitation.

The application was divided into four sections: project details, application questions, finances, and Project Impact. Project details covered the application team, project title, start date, duration, research category, project summary, public description, and scope. The summary, public description, and scope answers could each be up to 400 words. Applicants were told not to include website addresses in their answers, and URLs in application answers could make an application ineligible.

Questions 1 to 6 were not scored but still had to be completed. They covered applicant location, animal testing, permits and licences, international collaboration, export licences, and trusted research and innovation. The scored questions covered the need or challenge, approach and innovation, team and resources, market awareness, outcomes and route to market, wider impacts, project management, risks, added value, and costs and value for money. Each answer could be up to 400 words. The application also required partner finances and Project Impact information, with an academic institution submitting the relevant Je-S form.

The application appendices had strict limits. Depending on the question, an appendix could support the approach, team, project plan, or risk answer. The project plan or Gantt chart and the risk register were specifically required for their respective questions. Each appendix had to be a legible PDF no larger than 10MB and no more than two A4 pages.

What a credible Round One proposal needed to show

The strongest proposal structure would have connected the operational problem to a measurable demonstration. For example, a team could have defined a UK route, described the aircraft and airport interfaces, identified the hydrogen or electricity handling tasks, set out the evidence required for permissions, and explained how the resulting data would support later commercial service. A feasibility proposal would have needed a similarly concrete decision framework: what was uncertain, what information would be collected, who would use it, and what follow-on investment decision it would enable.

The consortium rationale needed to be more than a list of logos. The lead business had to own delivery, while partners supplied the operational, airport, research, regulatory, infrastructure, or commercial capabilities that the lead could not credibly provide alone. The budget then had to match those roles, respect the 70% partner-cost limit, and distinguish funded partners from non-funded overseas participants.

The market and impact answers also needed evidence rather than broad sustainability claims. Applicants were asked to describe target markets, customers, supply chains, barriers to entry, routes to market, productivity effects, and protection or exploitation of project outputs. Wider impacts included effects on customers, suppliers, the UK economy, government priorities, the environment, regions, jobs, education, safety, regulation, and diversity. A proposal that could not explain who would use the evidence or infrastructure after the grant would have had a weak route to value.

Project management and risk were explicit scored areas. The application had to identify work packages, leads, costs, reporting lines, dependencies, milestones, and management tools. The risk answer had to cover technical, commercial, managerial, and environmental risks, along with mitigations, critical inputs, and regulatory or certification requirements. That level of detail was appropriate for a programme involving aircraft operations, airport interfaces, public safety, and permissions.

Status and next step

The official UKRI page and the IFS competition page both identify Round One as closed. The verified closing date was 1 April 2026 at 11:00am UK time. The official pages do not announce a replacement round, a reopened window, or a current application route. Organisations interested in a future opportunity should monitor Innovate UK and UKRI for a new announcement and should not submit materials through the archived Round One links expecting them to be accepted.

For reference, the official sources are the UKRI opportunity page and the closed Innovation Funding Service competition brief. The UKRI page identifies Innovate UK as the funder and DfT as co-funder; the IFS brief supplies the detailed scope, eligibility, funding, timeline, and application requirements summarised here.