Embedding sustainability in pre-award grant processes

Governance, Advocacy & Funding Processes
1

Hi all,

I’m interested to hear whether anyone has embedded sustainability into their pre-award grant processes, either at an institutional level or within specific Schools, Faculties or departments.

At Bristol, we’re currently exploring what this could look like in practice. Some of the ideas being discussed include:

• Sustainability questions or statements within funding application forms (we’re about to require this for internal funding)
• Integration into grant management systems (e.g. Worktribe) through prompts, guidance or workflow steps
• Signposting to sustainable research resources and guidance at the application stage
• Consideration of whole-life costs, infrastructure requirements, energy demand, equipment purchases and operational impacts before submission
• School or Department-level sustainability checklists, potentially requiring review or sign-off from relevant colleagues (e.g. Technical Managers, School Managers) before an application progresses
• Sustainability Impact Assessments (SIAs) for larger projects
• Use of research carbon calculators or footprinting tools (e.g. TRACE, Labos 1.5) where appropriate
• Alignment with funder requirements and expectations (Wellcome, CRUK: (LEAF), UKRI, the Concordat, etc.)

I’m particularly interested in examples that go beyond simply providing guidance and have actually been built into processes, approvals, governance arrangements or funding systems.

If you’ve done anything similar, I’d be really interested to hear about it. Examples, templates, checklists, workflows, lessons learned, things that worked well (or didn’t!) would all be very welcome.

Many thanks,

Anna Lewis
University of Bristol / UKNSR

2

Hi Anna and all,

Thanks for initiating this discussion. We have done some activity around embedding environmental sustainability considerations into pre-award process at the University of Cambridge i.e. alignment with research funders requirements. I’d be happy to engage further on this and learning what others are doing as well as impacts/outcomes.

Thanks,

Alba Prados Pascual

Sustainable Research Coordinator, Research Office/Environmental Sustainability team

University of Cambridge

3

Hi Anna,

At Exeter, we have been working on alignment with funder requirements and expectations. We have certificate templates (approved by CRUK) that are used to map PI’s to LEAF accredited spaces, and have a supporting SOP for this process for research development managers. We are also looking into how we can prompt/capture sustainability considerations at application stage in worktribe. It’s early days on this but we are considering how to work it in, along with TRACE.

Many thanks,
Amy
University of Exeter

4

Hi all,

  • In our college of medicine and vet medicine, you are advised to have at a minimum taken our intro to sustainability course and signed up for our validation database for our sustainable lab awards at pre-award, this is done school by school in our college of science and engineering. These should require sign off from me and a sustainability coordinator locally but at the discretion of the researcher in practice.
  • Our research office provides guidance on sustainable research practice at the " Craft Your Application " section of their hubsite. This includes guiding questions (a different form of a checklist), boilerplate text and links to existing sustainable action plans done by school.
  • Edinburgh Innovation just launched a pilot Regen Innovation Catalyst fund with alignment to the Concordat required in their application process https://uoe-edinburgh-innovations.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2025-10/Regen%20Innovation%20Catalyst%20PoC%20Fund%202025%20-%20Call%20Guidelines%20.pdf

Discussions around more formalised embedding into pre-award has often focused on ‘well is this going to be evaluated later’, I think until we know that funders may actually look at this during a funded project and at project evaluation stage, this is a tricky discussion to have with stretched research managers in my opinion. If anyone manages to get traction on capturing sustainability data at application stage please let me know how you managed this as this is proving a tricky conversation to have in regard to capacity at the research office for us at Edinburgh.

Separately the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities have been requiring EIAs for the directly funded doctoral programmes, including continued evaluation throughout the programme. Although their funding model is changing, they are hoping to post an article on this experience soon and are keen it is scaled somehow.

Happy to chat about any of the above. Thanks

Susie,

Uni of Edinburgh