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Dictionary termTrack EStablev2026.2

Climate-aware funding

Research funding policies and award practices that explicitly incorporate climate and environmental sustainability considerations into eligibility, proposal review, and reporting.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

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Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A funder asks every research proposal over 500,000 GBP to include a one-page climate impact statement.
Is an instance
An ERC pilot programme weights environmental sustainability at 10 percent in evaluation.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A purely scientific-merit-only call with no environmental criteria is not climate-aware funding.
Not an instance
A funder one-off that requires a tick-box without scoring carries minimal weight.

Editorial commentary

Climate-aware funding has rapidly expanded from a niche to mainstream funder practice. Approaches include requiring climate impact statements in proposals, scoring environmental sustainability in peer review, capping or requiring justification for high-emission activities (long-haul travel, energy-intensive computing), offering green premiums for low-carbon project designs, and mandating annual environmental reporting. Major UK and EU funders (UKRI, Wellcome, NIHR, European Research Council) have signed concordats or published strategies in this direction. Some funders ringfence funds for sustainability infrastructure (e.g., shared cold storage).

References

UKRI Environmental Sustainability Strategy 2023; Wellcome Environmental Sustainability Policy.

Also known as

Sustainable research funding · Climate-conscious funding · Environmental funding policy

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Climate-aware funding"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/climate-aware-funding" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

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  "description": "Research funding policies and award practices that explicitly incorporate climate and environmental sustainability considerations into eligibility, proposal review, and reporting.",
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  "sameAs": [
    "Sustainable research funding",
    "Climate-conscious funding",
    "Environmental funding policy"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
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  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:23:02",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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