Enabling collaboration and innovation in business for a clean and sustainable future

Eco-I NW is a £14m R&D support project now open to businesses across England's North West. The programme has a distinctive model for interdisciplinary research and seeks to support low carbon business innovations across the region, including the areas of Cumbria, Lancashire, Liverpool City Region, Cheshire & Warrington and Greater Manchester. Previous programmes have supported more than 700 SMEs since 2012 and two of its graduates won the prestigious James Dyson Award in 2018.

In a time of crisis, we hope to facilitate business recovery, resilience, innovation and growth.

This is the first project of its kind that will open up such a huge regional resource to our businesses. Delivered by a consortium of universities; Lancaster, Central Lancashire, Cumbria, Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores and Manchester Met, Eco-I NW follows 8 years of award-winning and successful collaborative R&D activities. Business projects will be delivered through a variety of short-term interventions and long-term technical assistance.

Costs & Eligibility

This programme is part-funded and is available to businesses which are eligible under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) criteria, as follows:

• Based in North West England
• Employ fewer than 250 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees
• Annual turnover of less than €50 million (or the equivalent in GBP)
• Received less than €200,000 of de minimis State Aid in the last 3 years.

Find out more about how and why Lancaster University and our funding bodies holds your information.