National Environment Research Council (NERC)

Humanities and Social Sciences

The School of Education, Environment and Development (SEED) has been fortunate with awards from NERC to specific groups/disciplines.

NERC has been reviewing its strategies and interests and becoming more receptive to interdisciplinary work sometimes being involved in other no-strictly physical sciences thematic areas in cross-council calls.

Societal challenges

Addressing three broad societal challenges:

Benefiting from natural resources
Resilience to environmental hazards
Managing environmental change

Research areas and subjects

Areas of funding:

atmospheric physics and chemistry
climate and climate change
ecology, biodiversity and systematics
geosciences
marine environments
polar sciences
science-based archaeology
terrestrial and freshwater environments.

Research subjects on Je-S

Archaeology: palaeobiology and science-based archaeology.
Atmospheric physics adn chemistry.
Climate and climate change.
Ecology, biodiversity & systematics.
Genetics and development: population genetics and evolution.
Geosciences.
Marine environments.
Medical and health interface.
Environment and health: environmental variables and human health.
Microbial sciences.
Omic sciences and technologies.
Planetary science: surfaces and geology.
Plant and crop science.
Pollution, waste and resources.
Terrestrial and freshwater environment.
Methods, technology and tools

Queries about the remit to NERC.

Types of funding

Strategic research:
- Research programmes
- Highlight topics
- Partnerships and opportunities
Discovery research:
- Pushing the frontiers grants
- Exploring the frontiers grants
- Large grants
- Urgency funding
Cross-council scheme
international collaborations: NSF/NERC; FAPESP/NERC
Innovation funding (people and capacity):
- follow-on schemes
- knowledge exchange and placement schemes
- highlights

More information about the types of funding is available online.

UKRI Strategy 2022-2027 & Corporate Plan 2022-2025 and NERC Strategic Delivery Plan 2022-25

UKRI's Strategy 2022-2027 transforming tomorrrow together is available online.
The latest UKRI Corporate Plan 2022-2025 (August 2022): "UKRI’s corporate plan demonstrates how the world-class research and innovation UKRI supports will drive economic, social, environmental and cultural benefits for all."
The NERC Strategic Delivery Plan 2022-25:

Strategic objectives

People and careers

Balancing our funding to attract and retain global scientific leadership; and building communities of solutions- focused researchers.
Collaborating across UKRI to develop a collective approach to talent that nurtures disciplinary and interdisciplinary working.
Developing a deep understanding of our communities and using their insights to evolve our portfolio and to shape new funding practice.
Working with our community to promote greater diversity and inclusion across environmental science.

Places

Embedding an approach to place-based funding at local and regional level.
Creating and upgrading environmental infrastructures that unlock innovation and economic potential.
Maximising our investment within the UK through partnerships which allow research communities to work together at scale and develop clusters of expertise and investment.
Supporting UK environmental scientists to work with local communities internationally.

Ideas

Focusing our discovery science portfolio on excellent, ambitious and high-risk science; working in partnership across UKRI to develop a collective, interdisciplinary discovery science programme.
Pursuing strategic programmes that address the critical environmental challenges of climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss, and pollution.
Co-creating scientific exploration of large-scale, complex interactions within the Earth system.
Increasing our investment in public engagement with environmental science.

Innovation

Building the resilience of businesses, infrastructure and supply chains to environmental impacts and changing consumer opinion.
Pursuing positive outcomes for business and the environment that minimise the environmental impacts of consumption.
Realising the potential of sensing and monitoring technologies, artificial intelligence and digital twinning, autonomous and remote sensing, and high-performance computing to create new information services.
Creating the world’s first national system to measure the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

Impacts

Embedding environmental science within UKRI’s Strategic Themes.
Sustaining the UK’s sovereign capability to advise and inform UK Government policy on
the state of UK and global environment.
Determining the effectiveness and accelerating the adoption of nature-based solutions.
Maintaining the UK’s position as a leading nation in international environmental science.

Supported by a world-class organisation

Acting as one UKRI, as part of the new operating model, stripping out bureaucracy and becoming more efficient to deliver NERC and shared priorities.
Ensuring NERC commissioning is informed by high quality, diverse scientific expertise and advice.
Demonstrating the ongoing impact of NERC funding.
Becoming environmentally sound across our head-office and institute operations while enhancing scientific productivity.

Budget

Budget category i ii	2022–23 (£m)	2023–24 (£m)	2024–25 (£m)
Core R&I Budgets	288.19	311.36	325.33
Existing cross-UKRI Strategic Programmes	23.95	12.60	9.29
Fund for International Collaboration	9.08	3.60	2.67
Strategic Priorities Fund	14.86	9.00	6.62
Infrastructure*	77.78	69.00	71.75
World Class Labs	30.17	35.25	36.75
Digital Research Infrastructure Programme	2.26	1.14	0.00
Carbon Zero Fund	2.85	0.00	0.00
Existing infrastructure investments: Antarctic Infrastructure Modernisation Programme	35.00	22.00	35.00
Existing infrastructure investments: Rothera	2.00	6.00	0.00
Existing infrastructure investments: UKGEOS	5.50	4.61	0.00
R&I Budgets – existing time-limited commitments	0.37	0.00	0.00
COVID interventions	0.37	0.00	0.00
Grand Total	390.29	392.96	406.37

* Infrastructure projects are detailed separately below. Note that further infrastructure allocations to Councils may be made during the Spending Review period from the Infrastructure Fund, Digital Research Infrastructure Programme and Carbon Zero Fund Programme.

Notes

i. The figures provided in this document are in line with the 2022–23 – 2024–25 budget allocations for UK Research and Innovation. These are broken down by our budgeting and reporting categories, and exclude funding for ODA, Financial Transactions, and BEIS Managed Programmes. Figures are indicative and may vary over the course of the three-year period due to budget adjustments made as a part of on-going financial management and planning processes to maximise the use of our total funding.

ii. From 2022–23 UKRI talent investments are managed collectively across the Research Councils. The funding for collective talent activities outlined in this delivery plan are accounted for in the broader collective talent funding line included in our Corporate Plan.

Infrastructure Fundprojects include:*	Total lifetime allocation (some in future SR periods)
Infrastructure Fund: Wave 1 – Full project – Airborne Lab – Infrastructure	49.00
Infrastructure Fund: Wave 2 – Full project – Floods and Droughts Research Infrastructure (FDRI) Subject to business case approval	38.00
Infrastructure Fund: Wave 2 – Preliminary Activities – CO2 Storage Laboratory – Phase 2	2.00

* Further allocations may be made during the Spending Review period. Excludes wave 1 preliminary activities where spend was in 21–22 only. Allocations include contingency, which may be returned if unused.