Supergen Bioenergy Hub Business Interaction Voucher Scheme

We are now inviting applications for Business Interaction Vouchers (BIVs), a new funding stream to provide opportunities for academics and industrialists or non-academics to work together on short-term projects that aim to build new partnerships, accelerate research impact, and strengthen engagement between academia and industry in the UK bioenergy sector.

The objective of the call is to broker new relationships with relevant industrialists and improve our understanding of how contemporary knowledge in the non-academic community is supporting energy and industrial priorities. The scope of work is anything that falls within the Hub’s scope of activity and details can be found in our Research section. Note that this includes engineering, physical science, social and biological science approaches as well as associated sustainability and wider evaluations.

Funded activities could include, for example, meetings, travel, laboratory trials or tests, investigations, secondments, workshops, preliminary assessments, and site familiarisations. These must be focused on improving academic and non-academic understanding of biomass, bioenergy and bioproduct priorities in the current landscape, and ideally would form a pathway to a future collaboration.

Successfully funded projects will be impact focused and consider how they engage with and enrich Hub activities and communities.

Projects can request up to £15,000 funding at 100% FEC for one project based at one UK research organisation. Payment of 80% (up to max £12,000) of the FEC costs will be made, as is normal in UKRI funded research.

For more information (including eligibility and assessment criteria) and to apply, please download the call document and application form below.

Supergen Bioenergy Hub Business Interaction Voucher Scheme 2025 – Call document and application form (Word doc)

Timeline

Please see the call document for full information.

Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis from 1 September 2025 until 1 November 2025. Award decisions will be made and communicated as soon as possible after submission. Limited funding is available, so if you have a good idea, please do not wait until the final deadline to submit your proposal.

How to apply

Please download the call document and application form below.

Supergen Bioenergy Hub Business Interaction Voucher Scheme 2025 – Call document and application form (Word doc)

Information webinar

We held a webinar on 22 July 2025 providing an overview of the background to the call, scope, assessment criteria and how to apply. The questions in the webinar have formed the basis for the FAQs below.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Should the academic or non-academic partner submit the application?
The industry/non-academic partner should submit the application.

Can an industry partner be involved in more than one BIV application, and if so, would their role as the industry lead on multiple proposals influence the success rate of those submissions?
Yes, it is possible to for the industry lead to submit more than one application and this will not affect the review decisions, provided the applications are for new collaborative relationships.

Can nominal academic involvement (eg at 1%) be included in the costs?
Applicants may include directly allocated time where appropriate and justified but we discourage extensive use of academic time in the costed proposal, with more focus on the DI costs that are barriers to progressing academic and non-academic collaborations.

If an ECR is co-opted from a Supergen Bioenergy Hub partner university, can the funding be used to pay their salaries and training during the project?
Casual workers, postdocs and PhD students wanting a short contract or to bridge gaps in employment would be acceptable but recruiting for new resources would take too long in the given timescales.

Is it permissible for a non-permanent early career researcher (ECR) based at an academic institution to lead the project?
Yes

Can researchers who are already working on Supergen Bioenergy Hub projects be involved in BIV-funded projects?
Yes

Are training costs covered by this funding, eg to enhance collaborations?
If the training can be shown to enhance the work, then yes. We would need to see very strong evidence as to how the training would increase impact.

Are there any TRL (technology readiness level) entry points?
TRL is not asked for in the application form. EPSRC and BBSRC (which fund the Supergen Bioenergy Hub) fund TRLs 1-4/5 which covers discovery to pilot-scale research. TRL 5+ is usually covered by Innovate UK opportunities.

Can international travel, testing or conference be costed?
Eligible costs are as defined in the UKRI funding guide and should be justified in the application.

Are RTOs eligible?
Business  Interaction Voucher funding is available to UK academic institutes eligible to receive UKRI research funding. Institutes receiving funding must be members or become members of the Supergen Bioenergy Hub and sign the Agreement of Accession to the Hub’s consortium agreement before returning their acceptance letter.

Is there any requirement on IP availability from the work?
A statement on IP would be helpful but it is not a requirement.

Does the funding voucher count towards the de minimis grant amount for the applying SME?
You would need to refer to the grant or funder for clarity.

Approximately how many are you expecting to fund?
10