The challenge
Environmental crime represents a critical global challenge that severely impacts ecosystems, public health, and the economy. It is now recognised as the world’s fourth-largest criminal enterprise, generating up to €230 billion in annual global economic losses (UNEP-INTERPOL). This threat has driven a massive regulatory shift, marked by the enforcement of the EU’s Environmental Crime Directive and intensified global anti-greenwashing laws. Non-compliance can now trigger severe corporate penalties – reaching up to 10% of total global revenue – and expose executives to personal penalties.
Scope of the Funding Call
This opportunity supports the development of space-based applications and services targeting the following areas:
- Integrity and corporate fraud: Greenwashing, falsified environmental certifications, and verifying carbon credit baselines.
- Poaching and wildlife: Illicit trade of protected species and endangered flora, and monitoring online black markets.
- Illegal fishing and marine activities: Dark vessel tracking, Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, and maritime bilge dumping.
- Illegal mining and quarrying: Unauthorised mineral extraction footprints, unpermitted sand mining and critical raw material tracing.
- Waste and pollution: Illegal transboundary waste shipments, e-waste dumping, landfill expansions, chemical spills, and toxic emissions.
Who can apply?
Organisations eligible to apply for funding under ESA programmes include entities from ESA Member States, Associate States, and Cooperating States that have subscribed to the relevant programme. (The UK is a member state, but has not subscribed to every programme – please check with the UK Space Agency before submitting to a funded call).
Applicants can include private companies (large industry, SMEs, and start-ups), research institutions and universities, as well as public organisations developing space services.
Topics of relevance
One or more of the following operational needs could be addressed by the proposals submitted under this Call for Proposals:
- Detect and monitor: Establishing wide-area situational awareness, mapping environmental risk factors and identifying operational anomalies across vulnerable or remote geographic regions.
- Track and trace: Monitoring the end-to-end movement, routing and provenance of physical goods, commodities or materials from point of origin to final destination across global supply chains.
- Verify: Automating compliance checking, performance auditing and validating reporting accuracy to independently substantiate sustainability claims and manage regulatory liabilities.
Value of space
Satellite data and technology must play a critical role in the solutions proposed for this opportunity.
- Satellite Earth Observation (SatEO): utilising satellite imagery and automated analytics to support wide-area surveillance, flag operational anomalies, and provide independent verification of physical land or asset conditions.
- Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS / SatNav): using satellite positioning data to provide reliable geofencing, enhanced logistics tracking, and tamper-resistant provenance records across global supply chains.
- Satellite Communications (SatCom): leveraging satellite data networks, Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity, and edge processing capabilities to securely transmit automated alerts, field measurements, and critical sensor metrics from remote or under-connected geographic regions.
Project requirements
We look for motivated teams with established business, financial and technical expertise who can address our focus areas with market-ready concepts. Submitted proposals must demonstrate:
- Commercial Viability and Sustainable Business Models: Service concepts designed for long-term commercial profitability. Projects targeting public sector or law enforcement users (B2G) are strongly encouraged to incorporate commercial B2B customer streams to ensure post-project sustainability.
- Operational Readiness over Research: A clear focus on deploying pre-operational commercial services rather than pure academic research or basic scientific data exploration. Concepts must be driven by practical market demand and active user support.
- Technical Data Self-Sufficiency: Bidding teams must already possess the internal technical capability to acquire and process downstream space data. Teams must be self-sufficient from the outset, as ESA provides financial and strategic backing rather than direct software engineering support.
- Distinct Space Added Value: Clear, measurable operational or commercial advantages derived directly from the integration of space assets over traditional terrestrial alternatives.
Briefing and support
If you would like help to find a collaboration partner or advice, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Space team.
