Aviation's Non-CO2 Impacts on the Climate 2026: Up to £385,425 for UK Research Projects

Aviation’s Non-CO2 Impacts on the Climate 2026: Up to £385,425 for UK Research Projects

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), working with the UK Department for Transport (DfT) and Department for Business and Trade (DBT), is accepting applications for collaborative research on aviation’s non-carbon-dioxide climate impacts. The call is designed for UK research teams that can reduce scientific uncertainty, test the reliability of current evidence, or help industry and government make better decisions about mitigation.

Applications opened on 18 June 2026 and must reach UKRI by 4:00pm UK time on 8 September 2026. Projects can have a full economic cost of up to £385,425. NERC normally funds 80% of that full economic cost, which is £308,340 at the ceiling, subject to eligible-cost rules. The wider opportunity has a total fund of £2,312,550 and is expected to support up to six projects.

This is an academic-led research grant, not a general aviation technology competition. The work must focus on civil aviation and on non-CO2 effects such as contrails, aerosols, nitrogen oxides, water vapour, soot, sulphur-derived species, and the atmospheric processes that connect emissions to climate outcomes. A proposal may relate to conventional aircraft, sustainable aviation fuel, or zero-carbon aircraft, but research about aviation CO2 alone is outside the call unless it is necessary to understand a non-CO2 issue.

Key details

The official call page is the controlling source for the budget, scope, eligibility, and application questions. Check it again before submission because UKRI can update instructions and your institution may set an earlier internal deadline.

What the grant is intended to fund

The programme responds to a specific evidence problem: aviation’s climate effect is not limited to the carbon dioxide released by burning fuel. Non-CO2 emissions and atmospheric processes can produce warming or cooling effects, and the size and timing of those effects remain uncertain. That uncertainty affects how confidently researchers, airlines, manufacturers, fuel developers, and policymakers can compare mitigation choices.

The call therefore looks for research that does more than produce another isolated estimate. NERC is particularly interested in proposals that strengthen validation, make uncertainty explicit, clarify when a method can be trusted, or connect atmospheric evidence to an actual decision. The opportunity is the third of three academic-led research opportunities in the current programme, so the application should show how it adds to the existing portfolio rather than repeat work that has already been funded.

The official scope places projects broadly at technology readiness levels 1 to 4. That means early scientific and technical understanding is welcome, but a credible proposal should explain how its results could support later-stage research, operational testing, or mitigation development. The grant can cover facilities costs. It cannot be used for PhD studentship costs, cruise costs, or individual equipment requests of £25,000 or more. Smaller equipment items must be costed under the appropriate consumables or other directly incurred cost category.

The three research themes

Every application must address at least one of the three themes. Multi-theme projects and projects with industrial partnerships are encouraged, but breadth is not a substitute for a precise question and a workable method.

Theme one: confidence in contrail and aerosol prediction

This theme is about whether predictions can be interpreted and used reliably, not simply whether a model can generate a more accurate-looking forecast. A strong project might investigate uncertainty, model-dependent differences, operational limitations, failure modes, false positives, false negatives, unintended climate trade-offs, or the conditions under which a contrail mitigation method is ready for wider testing.

The call notes that existing funded projects already cover areas including contrail formation, aerosol roles, cloud persistence, radiative impact, observational constraints, modelling advances, and uncertainty in contrail and aerosol effects. A new application must explain its additional contribution. Independent benchmarking or intercomparison using common datasets or case studies could be relevant where it exposes systematic differences, structural bias, or meaningful agreement between models.

Theme two: future fuels

Future-fuel proposals should follow the evidence chain from fuel properties to emissions, atmospheric processes, and climate-relevant outcomes. The call identifies particulate matter, sulphur-derived species, and water vapour as areas where better quantitative understanding is needed. Sustainable aviation fuel is in scope, as are hydrogen fuel-cell systems and other future aircraft configurations where the research addresses non-CO2 effects.

For hydrogen fuel-cell aircraft in particular, the call says the evidence base for the climate relevance of water exhaust remains limited. A proposal could therefore focus on water-exhaust behaviour, dispersion, or microphysical impacts, provided the work is clearly connected to the programme’s climate and decision objectives. The application should not assume that conventional engine plume behaviour is an adequate proxy for a different propulsion system.

Theme three: underpinning decision-making

This theme connects atmospheric science to decisions about reducing non-CO2 climate impacts. Applicants should identify the stakeholders who will use the evidence, such as policymakers, airlines, aircraft manufacturers, or energy companies, and explain what decision the work will improve. The scientific method still needs to be rigorous, but the route from result to use should be visible.

A useful decision-focused project might establish which measurements are sufficient for a reporting framework, show how uncertainty affects the comparison of mitigation options, or define evidence thresholds for an operational or investment choice. Avoid describing “impact” as a distant aspiration. Name the user, the decision, the information gap, and the form in which the result will be usable.

Who can apply and how partnerships work

The project lead must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for NERC funding and must hold a role that satisfies NERC’s individual eligibility requirements. The call is open to research groups and individuals and welcomes applicants at any career stage, subject to those rules. Your research office should confirm the organisation and role position before the proposal is developed around an assumed eligibility interpretation.

An individual may be involved in no more than two applications to this opportunity, and only one of those applications can list that person as project lead. Track this rule across collaborations early. A late discovery that a team member is already on two submissions can force avoidable changes to the research design or leadership plan.

The call encourages interdisciplinary collaboration. UK partners that are not based at approved eligible organisations, international collaborators, and businesses or other industrial organisations should normally be included as project partners. Project partners fund their own involvement; NERC will fund only minor incidental expenses, such as some necessary travel, where allowed. Do not present a partner’s unpaid contribution as if it were a guaranteed cash award or assume that partner participation transfers eligibility to the partner organisation.

Subcontracting particular goods or services to non-eligible institutions is possible under the NERC research grants and fellowships handbook. That is different from making a non-eligible institution the lead applicant. Explain whether an outside organisation is a project partner, a supplier, or a subcontractor, and cost the relationship accordingly.

How the funding and project schedule work

The maximum full economic cost is £385,425, with NERC funding 80% of eligible FEC. The remaining 20% is the standard institutional contribution associated with the FEC model; there is no separate matched-funding requirement beyond that standard share. International project co-lead involvement has a special rule under the call and may be funded at 100% for eligible costs.

The funder expects up to six awards and anticipates at least one project under each theme. That creates a portfolio consideration: a technically excellent proposal still needs to make clear why it belongs in this round and how it complements, rather than duplicates, the projects already supported. The funders may support more projects if additional budget becomes available and enough submissions are high quality, but applicants should plan using the published ceiling rather than treating that possibility as assured.

The official timeline requires a grant start no later than 1 February 2027 and a grant end no later than 31 March 2028. Successful projects will also work with the programme coordination team and expert advisory group, attend cross-programme events and annual meetings, and report outcomes under standard UKRI terms. Include reasonable travel and subsistence for those programme activities in the budget. Annual reporting can continue for up to five years after the grant ends.

How to apply through UKRI

Applications use the new UKRI Funding Service, not the old Joint Electronic Submissions system. The organisation must be registered. The project lead starts the application, selects or verifies the organisation, and completes the online questions. The work can be drafted offline and copied into the service, but the final submission must be checked by the research office and submitted by the lead research organisation.

The application sequence is:

1. Select Start application on the official opportunity page and confirm that you are the project lead.
2. Sign in or create a Funding Service account, select the organisation, verify the email address, and set a password.
3. Complete the questions, add team and partner information, and follow the instructions for any required uploads.
4. Review the application in read-only form before sending it to the research office.
5. Allow the research office and finance team time to check eligibility, hosting arrangements, costing, and submission compliance.
6. Correct any issues returned by the research office, then ensure the checked application is submitted before 4:00pm UK time on 8 September.

If the project requires a NERC facility or service, discuss the work with the facility as soon as possible. UKRI says this should ideally happen two months before the deadline so the facility can confirm capacity, timing, and cost. The facility’s technical assessment is not submitted with the application, but the application must confirm that it has been received. Research requiring high-performance computing needs particular care because ARCHER2’s service end date is 21 November 2026; later work may require another UKRI or commercial provision, with the full commercial access cost included.

What the application must explain

The Funding Service questions are detailed enough that a short abstract is not a realistic preparation plan. The core sections include a plain-English summary, vision, approach, team capability, ethics and responsible research, facilities, data management and sharing, project partners, resources and cost justification, and relevant Trusted Research and Innovation information.

The summary has a 550-word limit and should identify the context, challenge, aims, objectives, benefits, and likely users in language that works for assessors, policymakers, and the wider public. The vision section has a 1,000-word limit and must show quality, importance, timeliness, scope fit, the theme or themes addressed, and beneficiaries. The approach section also has a 1,000-word limit and must cover method, feasibility, risks, previous work, translation, research environment, facilities, and a project plan with milestones and timelines.

The capability section has a 1,650-word limit and uses the Résumé for Research and Innovation format rather than a conventional CV. Use evidence that matches the proposed work: relevant methods, datasets, facilities, leadership, partnerships, stakeholder work, and contributions to research users. The RRI section should address environmental and societal implications, data security and reuse, ethics, and any unintended harm. If animals, genetic technologies, or human participants are involved, complete the relevant additional questions honestly.

The data-management question must explain how the project will follow UKRI open-research policy and NERC data policy. Identify the NERC data centre that would archive the data, whether the volume could exceed 1 TB, and the resources needed to prepare data for archiving. Partner records should identify contributions and their value, and successful projects must put formal collaboration agreements in place.

A practical preparation strategy

Start with a one-page scope test. State the non-CO2 effect, the uncertainty or decision problem, the relevant theme, the existing work you are extending, and the result that a real user could act on. If the page still reads like a general aviation decarbonisation proposal, narrow it. The call is not asking for a broad promise to make aviation greener; it is asking for research that clarifies a specific non-CO2 mechanism or decision.

Next, build a duplication map. Read the descriptions of projects already funded under the programme and list the boundary between that work and yours. For a contrail proposal, this might mean a new validation setting, a different uncertainty question, an operational constraint, or an independent benchmark. For a fuel proposal, show what is missing between fuel composition, emitted particles or water, atmospheric processing, and climate impact. Make the distinction explicit in the vision and approach rather than assuming assessors will infer it.

Then align the method, milestones, facilities, partners, and budget. A project that requires a facility but has no confirmation, proposes data collection but has no archive plan, or promises stakeholder use without naming a decision route will look unfinished. Use a Gantt chart or similar plan to show the sequence from data or experiment through analysis, validation, engagement, and outputs.

Finally, ask a non-specialist colleague to read the 550-word summary. They should be able to tell what is uncertain, what you will do, why the result matters, and who will use it. If they cannot, revise before investing more time in technical detail.

Common mistakes to avoid

The most serious error is treating non-CO2 as a label that can be added to a CO2 project. The application needs a genuine non-CO2 research question. A second error is claiming a novel project without showing how it differs from the current programme portfolio. Portfolio fit is a central feature of this call.

Budget errors are also avoidable. Do not request PhD studentship costs, cruise costs, or a single equipment item at or above £25,000. Do not assume NERC will pay all partner costs, and do not omit workshop and cross-programme meeting travel. The 80% FEC contribution is not the same as an unrestricted cash award to the project lead.

Another common weakness is a vague stakeholder paragraph. “This will inform policy” is not a pathway. Identify the policy, operational, reporting, investment, or technology decision; explain what evidence is missing; and state what output the user would receive. Also avoid leaving the research office until the final day. UKRI requires the lead organisation to submit, and the funder’s deadline does not account for internal approvals.

Frequently asked questions

Can a non-UK organisation lead the application?

No. The lead must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for NERC funding. International organisations can participate as project partners or, where the call permits, through an international project co-lead role with its specific cost rule.

Does the grant pay 100% of the project cost?

Normally no. NERC funds 80% of full economic cost, with eligible international project co-lead involvement funded at 100% under the call’s special rule. Confirm the final treatment with your research office.

Can an industry partner be included?

Yes. Industrial partnerships are encouraged, and businesses can be project partners. The project should still be led through an eligible UK research organisation, and the partner’s role and contribution should be recorded accurately.

Is research on sustainable aviation fuel eligible?

Yes, where it addresses aviation’s non-CO2 effects. The call is interested in how fuel composition affects emissions, atmospheric processes, and climate outcomes. A proposal focused only on CO2 reduction is not a fit unless the CO2 work is necessary to understand the non-CO2 issue.

When will applicants hear the result?

UKRI aims to complete assessment within three months of receiving applications and says feedback will be provided with the outcome within three months of the opportunity closing date. The funder may work with successful applicants after assessment before making an award.

Who should answer questions about the call?

For scientific or scope questions, contact [email protected]. For Funding Service problems, use [email protected] or the helpdesk phone number listed on the official page. For costs and institutional submission requirements, contact your research office first.

Official links and next steps

Read the official NERC/UKRI opportunity page for the live deadline, full theme descriptions, application questions, eligibility rules, and the Start application link. Researchers should also review the NERC research grants and fellowships handbook, the NERC facility information, UKRI data-management requirements, and the UKRI guidance on the Funding Service before finalising a proposal.

The immediate next step is a fit and eligibility check with the lead organisation’s research office. If the project passes that check, contact required facilities and partners, map the proposal against one or more themes, and work backward from the institution’s internal deadline. The external deadline is fixed at 4:00pm UK time on 8 September 2026; a proposal that is scientifically strong but not submitted by the lead organisation in time will not be assessed.