Innovate UK (on behalf of the Department for Transport), UK Shore Subsidy Scheme

This Innovate UK (on behalf of the Department for Transport), UK Shore Subsidy Scheme will provide funding to support research and development of technologies required to decarbonise the UK’s maritime sector as part of the UK Shipping Office for Reducing Emissions (UK SHORE) programme.

Roughly £356 million (£25 million cap per consortium) in grant funding will be provided across two competitions:

• the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition; and
• the Zero Emissions Vessels and Infrastructure competition:

Our key takeaways from the Subsidy Advice Unit (SAU) report are:

• Assessments should describe and evidence what would be likely to happen if the scheme was not implemented at both the sector level and at the level of individual companies.
• Assessments should provide a credible description of the market failures that the Scheme aims to remedy with evidence of the extent to which market failures (such as coordination and asymmetric information) are significant enough to inhibit the sector.
• Detail should be included where relevant on why non-subsidised loans would not be appropriate for projects that are close to deployment, like those with a relatively high-TRL.
• Assessments should discuss in more detail the extent to which the inclusion of alternative subsidy instruments (such as repayable advances or equity investments) that could reduce the overall level of subsidy required and competitive distortive.
• Supporting evidence (including examples from previous CMDC and ZEVI competitions) should be included to demonstrate the analysis that will be applied to test each project for additionality.
• In relation to the Energy and Environment Principles, Assessments could support their evaluations by drawing on supporting evidence and leverage analysis presented under Step 4 (such as the estimated emissions savings the Scheme will enable).

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