About the Project
If your business has a bold idea for cutting carbon, water use or waste on site, a new all-island fund could help pay for it. But you need to act quickly.
The Shared Island Industrial Sustainability Challenge Fund opened on 12 October 2026. It is worth €26 million (about £22 million) across the island, with €13 million for Northern Ireland projects. Invest NI runs it here, Enterprise Ireland runs it in the South, and InterTradeIreland is a partner.
What it pays for
The fund backs large projects in four areas:
- Flexible electrification: running plants on renewable power, including surplus wind and energy storage.
- Hard-to-abate climate tech: hydrogen, e-fuels, biogas and other fixes for heavy emitters.
- Water efficiency: using less water, and reusing, recycling and recovering it.
- Circularity and the bioeconomy: turning waste, by-products and biological residues into value.
What does "first-of-a-kind" mean?
It means taking a technology that is proven or close to market and using it at full industrial scale somewhere it hasn't been used before. Other businesses on the island should be able to learn from it, because sharing what you learn is a condition of the funding.
Four examples
Dust into power, Dungannon. O&S Doors is installing a £9m system that burns more than 10,000 tonnes a year of its own MDF dust to make heat and 1MW of electricity. It is the first of its kind on the island and is expected to save 1,500 tonnes of carbon a year. It received £2.4m from an earlier Shared Island grant. Read more
A heat battery for brewing, Lisbon. Heineken is installing a 100MWh heat battery that stores solar power as heat in bricks and releases it as steam around the clock, with no change to how the beer is made. Read more
Water from milk, Mexico. Nestlé's Cero Agua dairy captures the water given off when milk is dried into powder and reuses it, so the factory no longer draws on groundwater. Read more
Carbon capture for cement, Norway. Heidelberg Materials' Brevik plant is the world's first industrial-scale carbon capture at a cement works, capturing about 400,000 tonnes of CO₂ a year, half the plant's emissions. Read more
Key facts for Northern Ireland applicants
- You must be an Invest NI client.
- Projects need at least £5m of capital spend. The most any one project can get is £7.5m.
- Grants can cover up to 50% of costs for small firms, 45% for medium firms and 30% for large firms, though full rates are not guaranteed.
- All spending must be finished by 31 December 2030.
- Money is given out first come, first served. Expressions of interest close at 12 noon on Friday 13 November 2026, or earlier if the budget runs out.
Act now
Invest NI says demand has been strong and it expects the budget to be fully committed. If you have a project in mind, contact Invest NI today or visit the fund page. If you miss this round, fill in Invest NI's Net Zero Accelerator Request for Information so your project is on the radar for future support.
