Climate Ready grant applications open: First round closes 4 September 2008

The Rudd Government’s $75 million Climate Ready grants program, supporting the development of new products, processes and services to tackle climate change by providing dollar-for-dollar support for research and development, proof-of-concept and early-stage commercialisation activities, is open for applications.

Grants of between $50,000 and $5 million are available.

Somewhat controversially the program will operate on a rounds basis, in contrast to Commercial Ready's "always open" system. This should improve the clarity of the program and the time to a decision, however there has been no announcement as to whether the grant funding will operate on a rounds basis, too.

If it does, and there are four rounds per year, this would mean that the $75 million would be distributed in approximately $4.7 million amounts.

This would suggest that the opportunity to get a $5 million grant is pretty small, as there would be no other grant awarded for that round.

The round funding dates are as follows:

• Round 1 - 4 September 2008
• Round 2 - 4 December 2008
• Round 3 - 12 March 2009
• Round 4 - 25 June 2009

So, if you want to get into the first round you'd better scoot over to the Commercial Ready page, download the forms and get on with it. Oh, and be guided by the fact that Commercial Ready grants took approximately 3 months to write properly.

Get in now!