£150m Green Future Fellowships launch to scale UK climate tech

In a bold move to combat climate change, the Royal Academy of Engineering has unveiled a new initiative called the Green Future Fellowships. This program will distribute a staggering £150 million over the next five years to support 50 ground-breaking projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping society adapt to the impacts of climate change.

The fellowship aims to provide innovators, scientists, researchers, and engineers with the resources they need to turn their cutting-edge ideas into scalable, commercially viable solutions. Each of the 50 fellows will receive up to £3 million to develop their ideas over the next decade. The goal is to fund technologies that can make a significant impact in areas such as clean energy generation, efficient recycling, and energy recovery.

A recent survey of 2,000 adults conducted by Opinium for the Royal Academy of Engineering revealed strong public support for such initiatives. Nearly two-thirds of respondents believe more needs to be done to scale existing solutions to the climate crisis. Seven out of ten people surveyed think engineers are crucial for developing solutions to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. Additionally, almost two-thirds said the UK needs more engineers to tackle these challenges.

The public sees the most significant impact coming from three key areas: generating a continuous supply of electricity without burning fossil fuels, improving the efficiency of recycling metals and plastics, and capturing and using energy that would otherwise be wasted.

“The climate and sustainability crisis is the challenge of our generation, requiring era-defining solutions to be developed and deployed at scale and with urgency," said Dr Hayaatun Sillem CBE, CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering. "The Green Future Fellowships programme provides a new opportunity to do just that, providing the flexible, long-term support required to accelerate scalable and commercially viable climate innovations at all stages of development."

"We are backing our world-leading scientists, engineers and innovators as they invent and scale-up the breakthrough technologies that will help the UK reach net zero"