News
Carbon Descent partner search
1 September 2011
Carbon Descent are looking for partners for a new European call for proposals under the Smart Cities Programme. Carbon Descent have had considerable experience of securing European funding. We’ve secured and delivered 7 European projects over the last 12 years. Most importantly we are 1 of only 2 UK organisations to have secured EU funding from the EU Concerto programme. We submitted a proposal that secured around £2m for a project in London encompassing installation of solar, condensing CHP and district heating, large scale refurbishment, education and training, behaviour change programmes, research and monitoring. We have also acted as local managers for the project over the last 5 years liaising with the Commission and international partners on behalf of the London project to ensure smooth delivery. As a result we are very well versed in dealing in with the Commission and European projects, running successful projects.
Smart Cities
Smart Cities is a new European programme designed to draw on learning from Concerto. The Commission have effectively separated out some of the components of Concerto into separate funding streams.
We are looking for potential partners with a suitable project to submit to the EU under the Smart Cities Programme. We would write the bid on your behalf, ensure it is submitted, and secure and negotiate with the necessary European partners. We already have one possible European partner city.
We are looking for you to :
- Pay us to write the proposal – we estimate the costs to be around £30k
- Provide a suitable scheme around which to develop a proposal
- Include us in the proposal as local project managers
If successful the total European funding for your project would be of the order of 3m Euros (for the Heating and Cooling Stream).
About Smart Cities
There are 2 streams of funding open for proposals now - for which bids can be submitted separately or combined. These are:
- Strategic Planning
The Commission are looking are for cities to develop sophisticated integrated plans across building, energy, waste water and transport to find the optimal mix of measures to meet ambitious targets.
- Smart Heat and Cooling
This is specifically about linking waste industrial heat or cooling to residential districts in smartly controlled networks. The heat could be heat from existing power stations, from industrial processes or even recovered heat from data centres. The EU’s dream for 2020 is “zero cooling towers for Europe”. Cooling could be sourced from trigen or natural sources such as lakes, rivers etc. They won’t fund smart electricity grids – the idea is that the same smart controls could be applied to the design of heating and cooling networks.
Key success factors (relating particularly to the Heat and Cooling Stream):
- Industrial involvement (as well as Municipal Leadership) – a strong industry partner in the project
- A credible business plan included in the bid
- A replication plan – not just good intentions – you need to say who will do what to ensure the project is rolled out from the initial district in question. They want replication within 10 years
- Two international partner cities and with them added value from international co-operation.. Not just stapling together different projects into a proposal but much greater integration internationally.
- Needs to be rooted in a comprehensive city plan – why this project is being prioritised - how does it fit in with everything else going on in the city?
This will be a very competitive bidding round but the prize is significant grant funding for a high profile project.
For more information contact Chris Dunham chrisd@carbondescent.org.uk