Overview

The Carbon Trust, Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) and Technology Strategy Board (TSB) are the three main independent, Government supported bodies involved in UK energy innovation, as illustrated in Figure 1.

 Figure 1: Low carbon innovation landscape

Strength of the combined offering

Working together, the Energy Technologies Institute, Carbon Trust and Technology Strategy Board provide a more comprehensive range of support than would otherwise be possible. Without any one of the three organisations and their unique capabilities, the UK would be significantly less well placed to deliver its energy and climate change goals.

The following are key areas where the combined activities of the three organisations provide an enhanced offering to maximise delivery of the UK’s energy innovation goals: 

• Intellectual Property: Together the LCIG members support a range of approaches to managing intellectual property. This allows IP to be exploited by those organisations which are best placed to do so and provides flexibility to adapt to the challenges faced by companies in different technology areas and different stages of the innovation journey. In some cases this means ensuring innovators retain full ownership and access to IP; in other cases this means ownership and access are granted to funders or project partners or third parties, in order to ensure effective exploitation. These different approaches to IP are enabled by the different legal structures of the three bodies; it would be difficult for a single entity to offer the same range of options .
  
   
• Access to innovators: Together the LCIG members work with the widest possible range of innovators, both in the UK and globally, to maximise impact. These include academic groups, entrepreneurs, engineers, manufacturers, energy suppliers, installers, investors and end users.  Support can be provided to everything from individual organisations to large multinational consortia, depending on project objectives and needs.
  
   
• Breadth: Together the LCIG members support energy innovation across the full development lifecycle from the start of applied research (TRL 3, with strong links to Research Councils) through to commercial deployment (TRL 9, with direct links to the Environmental Transformation Fund).
  
   
• Interventions: Together the LCIG members provide a wide range of types of support which can be customised and combined as appropriate for different technology areas. These include commercial contracts, grants, loans, business incubation, equity investments and expert advice. Between them the LCIG members have four distinct State Aids approvals and can provide funding of up to 100% of project costs where appropriate.
  
   
• Enablers: Together the LCIG members are able to coordinate essential enabling activities in addition to research, development and demonstration of energy technologies. These enablers include skills and capacity building, knowledge transfer and inputs to government policy development.
  
   
• Timescales: Together the LCIG members focus on both near-term and long-term technology perspectives. This includes driving forward commercial opportunities to progress near-term carbon reduction and renewable energy goals to 2020, while simultaneously focusing on ambitious developments to put the UK energy system on a path to 2050 targets and deliver longer-term economic benefits to UK plc.