Miljöö Innovation Grant open for applications in August—Oulun Energia is granting financial support for projects that are building a more sustainable society
With the national Miljöö Innovation Grant, Oulun Energia will help companies, research and educational establishments, and teams to implement promising innovations and projects that will drive our society in a more sustainable and cleaner direction, in the fields of carbon neutrality, the circular economy and bio-based products, smart energy solutions, environmental actions, and smart mobility, for example.
The application period for the Miljöö Innovation Grant is 1 August to 30 September 2023, and the application can be submitted on Oulun Energia’s website. The applications will be processed and the grant awarded by a panel of judges formed of experts that will change every two years. They will examine, for example, the effectiveness of the innovation or project and the bottlenecks that could be addressed by the awarded grant. In practice, the grant can be awarded for research, product development, commercialisation of products, marketing, or, for example, promotion of energy and environmental education.
The concept of the Miljöö Innovation Grant has been refined based on the experience from the first round of applications
The Miljöö Innovation Grant was launched last year and the new application round is the second one to be held. The conditions for application have been clarified so that future applications meet the criteria for receiving the grant already when submitting the application. In the upcoming round of applications, the grants to be rewarded will total approximately EUR 150,000, depending on the number of projects eligible for funding. The sum of each individual grant typically varies from a thousand euros to tens of thousands of euros.
During the 2022 application round, the applications heavily centred on research and development projects that focused on renewable energy, energy efficiency, and waste heat minimisation. The grant was awarded, for example, to a data centre waste heat recovery ecosystem, to a pilot project and service development of a shared goods service, and to the development of a Laavu lean-to outdoor classroom, and the environmental education of children.
Oulun Energia hopes that the circular economy in particular will be reflected in the applications for this application round, as carbon dioxide emissions, biodiversity loss, and resource overconsumption are acute problems, for the solutions of which the circular economy has a lot to contribute.