What Is the Success Rate for Climate Tech Grants?
If you are a climate tech founder weighing up whether to invest weeks of effort into a grant application, the first question you probably ask is: “What are my chances?” The honest answer is that headline success rates across the major UK and European programmes are low — often single digits. But headline rates can be misleading. Behind the averages are wide variances driven by programme design, competition structure, sector focus, and above all, the quality and positioning of the application itself.
This article breaks down the real-world success rates across the funding programmes most relevant to climate tech companies in the UK and Europe, explores why the majority of applications fail, and sets out a practical framework for dramatically improving your odds. Whether you are preparing your first Innovate UK Smart Grant bid or planning a multi-year Horizon Europe strategy, understanding these numbers is essential to making informed decisions about where to invest your time and resources.
3–5%
Typical Innovate UK Smart Grant success rate
10–17%
Horizon Europe success rate by cluster
2–3x
Improvement with professional grant support
Innovate UK Smart Grants: The Numbers Behind the Headlines
Innovate UK Smart Grants are the flagship open-competition funding programme for innovative UK businesses. They are sector-agnostic, which means climate tech companies compete alongside applicants from health, digital, manufacturing, and every other sector. This breadth is both an opportunity and a challenge.
According to publicly available Innovate UK data and industry analysis, Smart Grant competitions typically receive between 1,500 and 2,500 applications per round. Of these, fewer than 100 projects are usually funded, placing overall success rates in the range of 3% to 5%. In particularly oversubscribed rounds, the rate can drop below 3%.
What the Raw Numbers Do Not Tell You
The 3–5% figure includes a large volume of speculative or poorly prepared applications. Many submissions fail at the most basic level: they do not clearly articulate what is innovative, they lack a credible route to market, or they are submitted by organisations that do not meet fundamental eligibility criteria. When you filter for well-prepared applications from eligible companies with genuinely innovative technology, the effective success rate is considerably higher — closer to 10–15% in our experience. That is still competitive, but it is a very different proposition from a 3% lottery.
Smart Grants offer between £25,000 and £2 million in funding per project, with project durations of 6 to 36 months. For climate tech companies, the key to success is positioning your application to stand out in a generalist competition. This means being explicit about the scale of the market opportunity, the clarity of your innovation claim, and the strength of your exploitation plan. Assessors score across a standard framework and the highest-scoring applications in each round are funded until the budget is exhausted.
One important nuance: Innovate UK has increasingly introduced targeted “themed” competitions alongside the open Smart Grant. Net-zero and clean energy themed calls tend to have smaller applicant pools and higher success rates, sometimes reaching 8–12%, because the applicant field is more focused. If a themed competition aligns with your technology, it is almost always worth prioritising over the open programme.
Horizon Europe: Higher Rates, Higher Complexity
Horizon Europe is the EU’s €95.5 billion research and innovation framework programme running from 2021 to 2027. Since the UK’s association agreement, UK organisations can once again participate as full partners in collaborative projects. For climate tech companies, the most relevant areas sit within Cluster 5 (Climate, Energy and Mobility) and parts of Cluster 4 (Digital, Industry and Space).
Success rates in Horizon Europe vary considerably by cluster, call type, and instrument. Collaborative Research and Innovation Actions (RIA and IA) in Cluster 5 typically see success rates between 10% and 17%. Some highly targeted calls, particularly in areas like green hydrogen, battery technology, and carbon capture, have recorded success rates as high as 20% in recent rounds. Conversely, the EIC Accelerator — the primary instrument for individual SMEs — has much lower rates, often below 5% for the full grant-plus-equity package.
Cluster 5 RIA/IA
10–17%
Climate, Energy and Mobility collaborative calls
EIC Accelerator
< 5%
Full package (grant + equity) for individual SMEs
The higher headline success rates in Horizon Europe come with a significant caveat: the bid preparation effort is substantially greater. A competitive Horizon Europe proposal typically requires a consortium of 5 to 15 partners across multiple countries, a proposal document running to 50 or more pages, and a preparation timeline of 4 to 6 months. The total investment of time and resources per bid is an order of magnitude greater than for Innovate UK Smart Grants. This is why strategic programme selection and funding landscape mapping are so important — you need to direct effort where the probability-adjusted return is highest.
Sector-Specific Programme Success Rates
Beyond the headline programmes, the UK has a growing landscape of sector-specific funds that are particularly relevant to climate tech companies. These programmes often have higher success rates because they attract more focused applicant pools and involve more targeted eligibility criteria.
Net Zero Hydrogen Fund (NZHF)
The NZHF has seen success rates of approximately 15–25% across its allocation rounds, though this varies significantly between the DEVEX (development expenditure) and CAPEX (capital expenditure) strands. The DEVEX strand, which funds earlier-stage feasibility and FEED studies, tends to be more accessible for smaller companies. The key differentiator is demonstrating a credible pathway to deployment and showing how the project fits within the UK’s broader hydrogen strategy.
Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF)
IETF phases have generally seen success rates of 20–30%, reflecting the programme’s focus on deployment-ready technologies in heavy industry. Applications require strong evidence of energy savings, carbon reduction, and commercial viability. The more narrowly defined scope naturally filters out speculative applications, resulting in a higher-quality applicant pool and better odds for well-prepared bids.
ATI Programme (Aerospace Technology Institute)
For climate tech companies working on sustainable aviation technologies, the ATI programme offers targeted funding with success rates typically between 15% and 25%. The programme funds collaborative R&D across the aerospace supply chain, with a growing emphasis on zero-emission flight, sustainable aviation fuels, and lightweight materials. Consortium quality and alignment with the ATI technology strategy are critical success factors.
DESNZ Energy Entrepreneurs Fund
The Energy Entrepreneurs Fund (EEF) targets early-stage clean energy innovations and has historically seen success rates of around 10–15%. It is particularly relevant for companies at TRL 3–6 with technologies in energy efficiency, power generation, and energy storage. The fund values disruptive potential and clear commercialisation pathways.
The pattern across these sector-specific programmes is clear: more targeted scoping leads to higher-quality applicant pools and better success rates. If your technology fits within one of these niches, a sector-specific fund should almost always be your first port of call before competing in the open Smart Grant arena.
Why Most Grant Applications Fail
Understanding failure patterns is arguably more valuable than studying the success rates themselves. Across thousands of reviewed applications, the same problems recur with remarkable consistency. Addressing these issues before you submit is the single most effective way to move from the rejected majority to the funded minority.
1. Unclear Innovation Claim
The most frequent fatal flaw. Applicants describe what their technology does but fail to articulate what is genuinely new about it compared to the state of the art. Assessors need to see a clear, specific innovation claim — not a general description of a technology area. “We are developing a heat pump” is not an innovation claim. “We have developed a novel refrigerant cycle that increases COP by 40% at ambient temperatures below −15°C, addressing a fundamental limitation of current air-source heat pump technology” is.
2. Weak Commercial Case
Many technically excellent applications are let down by a superficial treatment of the market opportunity. Stating that “the global clean energy market is worth $1.5 trillion” tells an assessor nothing about your specific addressable market, your route to it, or your competitive position. Strong applications quantify their Serviceable Addressable Market, name target customer segments, present evidence of customer engagement, and articulate a clear pricing and go-to-market strategy.
3. Misaligned Scope and Programme Fit
Submitting an application that does not clearly fit the programme scope is surprisingly common. Each funding programme has specific objectives, and assessors evaluate how well your project aligns with them. An application for a deployment-stage fund that describes a basic research project, or vice versa, will score poorly regardless of the quality of the underlying technology. Getting this alignment right starts before the writing begins — it starts with proper programme selection.
4. Unrealistic Work Packages and Costs
Assessors are experienced professionals who can spot unrealistic timelines, inflated cost estimates, and poorly justified resource requirements. Work packages should be logical, sequential, and demonstrate clear milestones. Each cost line should be justified by the activities described. Overly ambitious timelines or undercosted projects signal inexperience and erode assessor confidence.
5. Neglecting the Team and Track Record
Grant funders are investing in teams as much as technologies. Applications that gloss over team capabilities, relevant experience, and track record miss an opportunity to build assessor confidence. Early-stage companies can compensate for limited commercial track record by highlighting academic credentials, relevant industry experience, advisory board strength, and existing partnerships.
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Get in TouchHow to Improve Your Odds: A Structured Approach
Moving from the average 3–5% success rate to a realistic 15–25% success rate is not about luck. It is about a disciplined, structured approach that addresses the factors assessors actually evaluate. Here is what that looks like in practice.
Start with Programme Selection, Not Proposal Writing
The single highest-impact decision you make is which programme to apply to. A perfectly written application submitted to the wrong programme will fail. Before investing any time in writing, conduct a thorough mapping of available programmes against your technology readiness level, sector, and commercial stage. A GrantMatch Scan can shortcut this process by providing a prioritised list of programmes where your technology has the strongest alignment.
Build a Strong Innovation Narrative
Your innovation narrative is the backbone of every grant application. It must clearly articulate: what the current state of the art is, what specific limitation or gap your technology addresses, how your approach differs from alternatives, and what evidence you have that it works. This narrative should be developed once, rigorously, and then adapted for each specific programme. A well-crafted innovation narrative does not just improve your grant applications — it strengthens your investor pitch, your customer conversations, and your recruitment efforts.
Write for the Assessor, Not for Yourself
This is the most consistently underappreciated factor in grant writing. Assessors are typically experienced professionals who review dozens or even hundreds of applications per competition. They score against a published framework with specific criteria and weightings. Your job is to make their task as easy as possible. This means: mirroring the language and structure of the scoring criteria, providing explicit evidence for every claim, using clear headings and signposting, and never assuming the assessor has specialist knowledge of your niche technology area.
A useful discipline is to print out the scoring criteria and go through your draft paragraph by paragraph, marking which criterion each section addresses and what score you would give yourself. If you cannot clearly assign each paragraph to a specific criterion, your structure needs work.
Quantify Everything You Can
Assessors respond to specific, quantified claims far more than to qualitative assertions. Instead of “significant energy savings,” write “a demonstrated 35% reduction in energy consumption compared to conventional systems, validated through 6 months of pilot testing at two commercial sites.” Instead of “large market opportunity,” write “a UK serviceable addressable market of £450 million by 2030, based on the projected deployment of 2.4 million units.” Specificity signals depth of understanding and builds assessor confidence.
Get Your Financials and Work Packages Right
A surprising number of otherwise strong applications are undermined by poorly constructed work packages or unrealistic financial projections. Work packages should follow a logical sequence with clear dependencies, deliverables, and milestones. Each cost should be traceable to specific work package activities. Labour rates should be realistic and justifiable. Subcontract costs should be explained and benchmarked. Getting these details right does not just improve your score — it demonstrates the project management capability that funders need to see.
The Compounding Effect: Why Failed Bids Still Have Value
One of the most important mental shifts for climate tech founders to make is recognising that an unsuccessful grant application is not wasted effort. In fact, treating your grant strategy as a cumulative process rather than a series of isolated bets is one of the strongest predictors of eventual success.
Every serious grant application generates a set of assets that carry forward. A well-articulated innovation narrative, once written, can be adapted for multiple programmes. Market analysis and commercial projections developed for one application feed directly into the next. Work package structures and cost models become templates. Consortium relationships built for a Horizon Europe bid persist even if that particular bid is unsuccessful.
What Carries Forward from Every Application
- 1Refined innovation narrative — Each iteration sharpens how you describe what is novel and why it matters. This improves investor pitches, customer conversations, and future bids alike.
- 2Market analysis and commercial projections — The market sizing, competitive landscape, and financial projections developed for grant applications are directly reusable across your business development activities.
- 3Work package templates and cost models — Once you have built a detailed project plan for one programme, adapting it for another takes a fraction of the original effort.
- 4Consortium and partner relationships — Partnerships established during bid preparation persist and strengthen. Many successful Horizon Europe bids are built by consortia that were assembled for a previous unsuccessful attempt.
- 5Assessor feedback and scoring insights — Most programmes provide written assessor feedback on unsuccessful applications. This feedback is invaluable for understanding how your application was perceived and what to strengthen next time.
The practical implication is that the second application you submit is significantly less effort than the first, and the third less again. Companies that approach grant funding as a long-term strategy rather than a one-shot gamble are the ones that consistently win. The effective cost per successful bid decreases with each attempt because the marginal effort reduces while the quality of the application improves.
The ROI of Professional Grant Support
A common question from climate tech founders is whether it makes financial sense to engage professional grant support rather than writing bids in-house. The answer depends on your internal capacity and experience, but the data strongly favours professional support for companies that are not already experienced bid writers.
Without Professional Support
A first-time applicant to Innovate UK Smart Grants typically invests 80–150 hours of internal effort in preparing a competitive application. At average SME staff costs, this represents £8,000–£15,000 in opportunity cost. With a 3–5% success rate, the expected cost per successful bid is £160,000–£500,000 in cumulative internal effort across multiple attempts.
With Professional Support
Experienced grant professionals typically achieve success rates of 15–25% on well-selected programmes, while also reducing the internal time commitment by 50–70%. Even with professional fees factored in, the expected cost per successful bid drops to £30,000–£80,000. For grants worth £250,000 to £2 million, this represents an exceptional return on investment.
Beyond the direct financial ROI, professional support frees your technical team to focus on what they do best — developing technology — rather than spending weeks learning the nuances of grant writing. It also reduces the risk of avoidable errors that waste entire funding rounds: submitting to the wrong programme, missing eligibility requirements, or structuring work packages in ways that undermine assessor confidence.
The most important factor in choosing grant support is sector expertise. A consultant who has written winning bids in your specific technology area understands the assessor perspective, the competitive landscape, and the narrative approaches that score well. Generic grant writers without climate tech expertise are unlikely to deliver the same results.
GreenFundr’s Approach to Improving Success Rates
At GreenFundr, we work exclusively with climate tech companies, which means every engagement benefits from deep sector knowledge and a growing library of what works across clean energy, hydrogen, carbon capture, sustainable materials, and the broader net-zero landscape.
Our approach is built around a simple principle: the best way to improve grant success rates is to only submit applications where the alignment between your technology, the programme scope, and the assessor expectations is strong. This means we spend as much time on programme selection and pre-submission positioning as on the actual writing.
GrantMatch Scan
We start by mapping every relevant UK and EU funding programme to your technology, TRL, and commercial stage. This ensures you only invest effort in bids where the fit is strong. Learn more about GrantMatch Scan
Grant-Readiness Assessment
Before writing begins, we assess your readiness across the dimensions that assessors evaluate: innovation claim, market evidence, team, IP position, and financial standing. Gaps are identified and addressed before they become scoring weaknesses. Learn more about Grant-Readiness
Assessor-Focused Bid Writing
Our bid writing process is structured around the specific scoring criteria for each programme. Every section is mapped to a criterion, every claim is evidenced, and the narrative is designed to make the assessor’s job as straightforward as possible.
Post-Submission Review and Iteration
When assessor feedback is available, we analyse it in detail and use it to strengthen the next application. This iterative process is how we build the compounding effect that turns a 5% base rate into a 20%+ effective success rate across a portfolio of bids.
Ready to Improve Your Grant Success Rate?
Book a free 30-minute funding review. We will assess your technology, identify the best-fit programmes, and give you a realistic view of your chances — along with a clear plan to maximise them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average success rate for Innovate UK Smart Grants?
Innovate UK Smart Grants typically see overall success rates between 3% and 5%, though this varies by competition round and sector. Climate tech applications often face additional competition due to the volume of submissions in clean energy and net-zero categories. First-time applicants tend to have lower success rates, while companies with prior Innovate UK engagement often perform significantly better.
Are Horizon Europe grants easier to win than Innovate UK grants?
Horizon Europe success rates are generally higher than Innovate UK Smart Grants, typically ranging from 10% to 17% depending on the specific cluster and call. However, Horizon Europe bids are considerably more complex to prepare, requiring transnational consortia, longer proposal documents, and alignment with specific EU policy objectives. The total effort per bid is substantially greater, so the higher success rate does not necessarily translate to a better return on time invested.
How many grant applications should a climate tech company expect to submit before winning?
Based on industry averages, a well-prepared climate tech company should plan for 3 to 5 serious applications before securing its first grant. Companies that invest in proper grant-readiness work before their first submission, including technology positioning, narrative development, and assessor-focused structuring, often reduce this to 1 to 3 attempts. Each unsuccessful bid generates reusable material that strengthens subsequent applications.
What is the most common reason climate tech grant applications fail?
The single most common reason is a weak or unclear articulation of the innovation and its commercial pathway. Assessors need to understand what is genuinely novel, why the market needs it, and how the company will exploit the results. Many applicants focus too heavily on the technical description and neglect the business case, market validation, and exploitation strategy that carry significant weight in scoring.
Does using a grant consultant improve success rates?
Yes, working with experienced grant professionals typically doubles or triples success rates compared to first-time unassisted applications. The improvement comes from better programme selection, stronger narrative structure, assessor-focused writing, realistic work packages, and avoiding common disqualification errors. The key is working with consultants who have direct experience with the specific programmes and sectors relevant to your technology.
Is it worth applying for a grant if the success rate is very low?
In most cases, yes, provided you approach it strategically. Even unsuccessful applications generate significant value: refined technology narratives, clearer commercial propositions, structured project plans, and identified consortium partners. These assets carry forward to future bids and can accelerate other commercial activities such as investor pitches. The key is to avoid treating each bid as a standalone exercise and instead build a cumulative funding strategy.