HI-ACT Flex Fund – New and Expanding Areas

Funding available to UK research institutions to facilitate collaborative research with non-academic partners into the role of hydrogen in local and regional areas of the UK. 

The Hub for Hydrogen Integration for Accelerated Energy Transitions (HI-ACT) is a £12.5 million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)-funded research hub led by the University of Birmingham that aims to drive forward the design of a hydrogen integration plan for the UK’s energy system to help progress the UK’s transition to net-zero.

HI-ACT provides a Flex fund to award funding for successful UK-based researchers and non-academic partners to collaborate within the hydrogen research field.

The aim of the fund is to enable researchers and industry/public sector/third sector partners to co-create research on the role of hydrogen in local and regional net zero transitions. The specification of this call is to target areas such as rural locations and island communities, rather than large industrial clusters that have been investigated via other research grants. HI-ACT welcomes hyper-local community-level proposals, as well as proposals covering larger geographies of towns and (small) cities. 

Proposals to support activities should be developed between organisations in the region and the lead academic organisation to deliver impact on the role of hydrogen in local and regional net-zero energy transitions. Each project will need to ensure it has at least one outreach/engagement activity to disseminate the work undertaken.

Project proposals should demonstrate how they would aim to achieve the following objectives:

• Consider the development of local/regional whole energy systems approaches, with the integration of hydrogen. 
• Target rural locations, island communities, towns, (small) cities, and hyper-local community-level geographies.
• Demonstrate links to one or more HI-ACT work packages.
• Create clear methods to co-create research with partners. 
• Attract match-funding from co-creation partners.