The natural environment investment readiness fund (NEIRF) supports the government’s goals in the 25 year environment plan, green finance strategy and 10 point plan for a green industrial revolution. It aims to stimulate private investment and market based mechanisms that improve and safeguard our domestic natural environment by helping projects get ready for investment.

The NEIRF is a competitive grants scheme providing grants of between £10,000 and £100,000 to support the development of environmental projects in England that:

• help achieve one or more natural environmental outcomes from the 25 year environment plan
• have the ability to produce revenue from ecosystem services to attract and repay investment
• produce an investment model that can be scaled up and reproduced

Proposals should focus on generating revenue from ecosystem services, rather than goods or commodities. Examples of ecosystem services that could produce revenue include:

• selling carbon credits from woodland creation or peatland restoration, using the Woodland Carbon Codeor Peatland Code
• selling biodiversity units from a habitat bank, using the Natural England biodiversity offsetting metric
• selling ‘catchment services’ (such as improved water quality and natural flood management benefits) resulting from natural environment improvements

We want to see a diversity of ecosystem service and investment models represented. We welcome proposals outside the examples above, ones which consider interactions between ecosystem services or focus on more specific or complex elements of existing codes or metrics.

The grants are to help you to:

• get support from professional advisors to develop your project, address barriers to investment and present an attractive case for potential investors
• build capability to attract financial investment into natural environment projects
• develop a market for ecosystem services (such as investment or trading platforms, codes for verifying benefits, aggregator vehicles)

We will expect you to make the products and knowledge gained through the fund openly available for the benefit of others. This is to help the development of:

• the natural capital investment sector
• policy and regulation, including alignment with future government funding schemes

You can apply for an NEIRF grant between 8 November 2021 and 3 February 2022.

The Environment Agency administers the scheme on behalf of the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) group.