Horizon Europe return boosting UK research
The UK’s research sector is already seeing major benefits from the country’s renewed ability to access Horizon Europe funding, Simon Penfold discovers.
The UK has made an impressive return to Horizon Europe – the world’s largest research and innovation funding programme – after it was frozen out for three years in a row with the EU over Brexit and Northern Ireland trading arrangements.
The dispute was resolved in 2023, with a bespoke deal opening up Horizon Europe to applications from UK scientists and researchers from the start of last year.
Recent data shows British scientists secured £635 million in grants through the scheme in 2024, its first year back in its new status as a non-EU associate member. It made the UK the fifth most successful of the 47 nations taking part in the programme – 27 EU member states and 20 non-EU associate members including Canada, New Zealand, Norway and South Korea.
The UK’s performance compares to the £1.21 billion secured by Germany and £777m in grants for Spain – the two biggest winners in 2024.
The Government is aiming to build on that success with a major promotion programme this year, encouraging more organisations and scientists to participate.
UK Science Minister Lord Vallance said: "Science is stronger when we work together, and through Horizon Europe, UK researchers, businesses and innovators have access to the world's largest programme of research collaboration."
"This is a massive opportunity for the innovators found on science parks across the UK and beyond. Making the UK’s association to Horizon Europe a success is our priority, and we are starting to see positive results.”
Under Horizon Europe public and private organisations of all sizes – from major universities to small businesses – can access the £80 billion of grants available in the period from 2021 – 2027 to support their research and development from early stage to launch.
This funding aims to help equip firms to turn ideas, early-stage developments, new research and all forms of innovation into tangible opportunities to grow their business. Typically the grants enable organisations to work in collaboration including with universities and other research institutions, and across Europe, to develop their ideas into commercial opportunities.
Loss of access to Horizon Europe was seen as a major blow for the UK’s science and research sectors, hurting both its reputation and its ability to recruit top international talent.
But in just its first year back the UK was the second most successful country in terms of grants for proposals by individual scientists – securing £209m.
Exploring new horizons
It is a promising start for the new Labour Government, which has made backing the science and technology sectors central to its mission to build economic growth.
Since the UK confirmed its association to Horizon in January 2024, the Government has been providing extensive support to help researchers and business secure funding from the £80 billion programme, and officials say they are already seeing some welcome signs of increasing UK uptake and overall success rates.
Indeed, when looking at overall proposals, the UK performs strongly on success rates – which have increased from nearly 15% in Horizon 2020 – the previous scheme – to around 19% in Horizon Europe.
Researchers in both the public and private sector across the UK can apply for funding, hopefully leading to real-world benefits for UK science, economic growth and job creation – Horizon Europe aims to create 300,000 new jobs by 2040, 40% in highly skilled fields.
The Government is currently providing extensive assistance to UK R&D communities to maximise their chances of applying and succeeding with Horizon Europe. This support includes concrete funding initiatives (known as pump priming), information and brokerage events conducted both in the UK and Europe, and large-scale advertising campaigns.
While data from the programme can take up to 12 months to surface, early indications continue to show positive signs of UK recovery although it is still too early to draw full conclusions on the impact of association. For example, for the latest ERC Synergy Grants, the UK hosted 18 projects – the second highest number.
To boost UK Horizon participation, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has launched a range of initiatives with its partners such as UKRI to help applicants from right across the UK, including Northern Ireland, engage with the grant application process.
DSIT is also working with key stakeholders on plans to boost UK participation as well as encouraging the international (in particular European) R&D community to collaborate with UK organisations. This includes providing ‘pump priming’ support through the British Academy and Innovate UK to encourage UK organisations to join European consortia, lead applications and ensure effective uptake in opportunities.
On the publicity front, a series of awareness-raising roadshows have taken place in Birmingham, Glasgow, London and Belfast.
To support potential applications a team of UK National Contact Points – government-nominated experts – offer advice and hands-on support with the application process.
While there is ambition in Government to improve the UK’s performance, the DSIT team say they are ‘realistic’ about the time it will take to achieve a significant recovery – at its historic peak in Horizon 2020 the UK reached a funding share of over 16%.
Government officials work with the sector to understand exactly where the UK is falling behind, so that they can target their action accordingly. As the data from EC comes in, officials plan to further pivot their activities, but there is a 9-12 month data lag.
In the meantime, thanks to the terms of the UK’s deal with the EU, we broadly only pay for what we receive – meaning we do not lose out on R&D funding if our participation remains low.
TRUE Impact
In terms of real-world impact, work with Horizon Europe has already led to the world’s first climate-positive pea-based gin, Nàdar.
Arbikie Distillery is a family-owned farm distillery perched on the east coast of Angus. Distillery manager Kirsty Black explained: “Arbikie is a farm to bottle distillery that makes an award-winning range of gin, vodka and whisky.
“Everything we make starts in the fields that surround the distillery. We grow a range of cereals and vegetables and then take them into the distillery where we perform every step of the process to make the spirit, flavour it, mature it and pack it in to the final bottle.
“The Horizon Europe project we were involved in was titled TRUE – TRansition paths to sUstainable legume-based systems in Europe.
“This project focused on legumes and aimed to identify the best ways of increasing their cultivation and consumption across Europe. We are so interested in legumes as they are a special group of plants.”
All plants need nitrogen to grow but, despite 80% of the air we breathe containing nitrogen, it is not in a useable form for plants. Instead their nitorigen needs usually met through industrially produced fertiliser – a major contributor to agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“But this is where legumes come in; via biological nitrogen fixation they can use the nitrogen in the air,” explained Kirsty. “This means we can avoid the use of polluting nitrogen fertilisers. They also enrich the soil with nitrogen so the plants growing around them and after them benefit too.
“This project’s goal was to encourage farmers to grow legumes. To do so the consortium looked at every aspect of legumes – from breeding and growing through to developing markets by not only developing legume-based recipe books but also demonstrating that you could turn them into anything – from doughnuts to yoghurt and gin!
“Horizon Europe helped us connect and collaborate with different, specialised, organisations across Europe that we would never have met otherwise. We’re a distillery so we understand how to make alcohol but the project consisted of 23 other organisations who had their own areas of expertise – through this we improved out upstream and downstream activities.
“For example we trialled alternative cropping systems on our farm, we quantified the carbon footprint of producing legume-based spirits through lifecycle analysis experts, and we explored uses for our by-products.”
Arbikie’s application process was led and guided by The James Hutton Institute, an interdisciplinary scientific research institute in Scotland.
Kirsty said the biggest impact came from collaborating with academic institutions: “Quantifying the carbon footprint of our pea-based products through lifecycle analysis allowed us to develop climate positive claims which have open doors for us across the globe.”
Electra expansion
Another beneficiary has been Electra Commercial Vehicles, a manufacturing firm based in Brighouse. Managing director Benjamin Smith said “We are an OEM, manufacturing heavy duty battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles from 7.5 tonnes to 42 tonnes, which cover a wide variety of applications in sectors such as waste management, refuse collection, GSE – ground support equipment at airports, and distribution.
“We were approached back in 2022 by the University of Surrey, who were putting together a bid to submit for Horizon 2020 funding to construct five electric drive pilot vehicles above 40 tonnes, called ‘ESCALATE’.
“As an innovative UK OEM Electra were a good fit to provide one of the vehicles, along with SISU, BMC Turkey, Mercedes Benz Turkey, and Ford Otosan. The €22m project brings together 37 partners – 33 from Europe, and four from the UK, to develop and demonstrate the latest in electric drive and re-charging technology.
“The aim is to show that these vehicles can compete with existing diesel versions and bring confidence to markets across Europe and beyond that heavy duty electric drive is here and commercially feasible.
“The Electra vehicle will be a 40-tonne drawbar configuration, with refrigerated bodies on the truck and trailer. Drive will be via a central electric motor through a gearbox and will incorporate innovations such as roof mounted solar panels to contribute to the batteries provided by one of the partners, and predictive maintenance via telematics.
“This Horizon Europe project has really helped Electra to expand and develop higher weight vehicles, opening up new markets and opportunities. Development of new vehicle types is very expensive in both time and resources, so the funding goes a long way to enabling our progress.”
The biggest single boost from Horizon Europe, said Benjamin, was: “The security of knowing that the funding is in place to take away some of the risk associated with new developments, but also important is Horizon Europe’s wider exposure to new markets.
“In addition, collaborating with 36 other partners – it is a particularly big project – brings new ideas, technologies and opportunities to grow both nationally and internationally.”
He added: “We are getting the Electra name and brand out into the wider world through more channels than we would on our own – communication and dissemination are important parts of Horizon Europe projects.”
Accessing Horizon Europe More information on support for accessing Horizon Europe is available at horizoneuropeUK.org
What's It All About? Watch an explainer of Horizon Europe at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IejeuqyseKM
See how it's made Watch how the world's first carbon negative gin was created with research funded byHorizon Europe at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wuc2S_DCoI
Discover more about the work of Arbikie at arbikie.com or more about Electra at electracommercialvehicles.com