Funding

Climate Action Fund

Our Climate Action Fund is a £100 million commitment over 10 years fund to help reduce the carbon footprint of communities and inspire community-led climate action. This funding shows what is possible when people take the lead in tackling climate change.

To date we have awarded £78.6m to 550 projects to enable people across the UK to take climate action in their local communities. This includes over 110 partnership projects and projects awarded through the Together for Our Planet programme.

You can now apply for Climate Action Fund - Our Shared Future. It is about inspiring more people to take climate action.

Climate Action Fund – Energy and Climate closed to new applications on 1 March 2024.

Sustainable Steps Wales

Sustainable Steps Wales has £16 million in funding from the Dormant Accounts Scheme. In line with Welsh Government priorities, the programme will support local communities and young people to contribute to a prosperous, low carbon future for Wales.

The programme has two rounds. Round one aims to boost Wales’s commitment to a sustainable future by accelerating action and reaching new audiences. Round one has offered three opportunities to apply for funding:

1. Development Trusts Association Wales successfully applied for a £2,251,045 grant, awarded in June 2022, the grant will be active over seven years. From 2023 they will provide a Wales-wide mentoring service to help at least 345 community groups take climate action. The service will support those that aren’t normally involved in climate action, reaching a diverse range of communities across Wales.
2. Assessments are currently underway on applications for grants up to £350,000, the successful projects will be announced in Feb/March 2023. The grants are for organisations that already have ambitious plans. Find out more on our Sustainable Steps Wales Action Grants page.
3. The next opportunity to apply for grants with this scheme will be for communities that have received support through the mentoring service. The scheme offering grants of up to £15,000 will be open to applications from communities that have been mentored, to put their plans into action, this will open during 2023.
   

Together for Our Planet

The Together for Our Planet programme was launched in 2021 to engage people and communities with COP26 and inspire positive climate action. National Lottery funding totalling over £4.7 million was distributed to over 530 community projects across the UK to support communities take action on climate change. The fund, which offered grants of up to £10,000, has now closed. Here are the projects that received funding in Scotland, and here are the projects that received funding across rest of UK.

Climate Action top-ups

Our Welsh directorate also piloted Climate Action top-ups with the goal of inspiring environmental action from a range of National Lottery funded community groups. The pilot asked funded groups and charities in Wales to commit time to developing plans to respond to climate change and we offered a top up to their existing funding to do so. Some groups saved lots of energy and money, others enhanced their local environment while others noted benefits for their health and wellbeing. We’re now exploring this approach further with new Climate Action Boosts in Wales and a top-up programme in Northern Ireland.

Other funders may also have funding for climate action

We want to encourage and inspire all of grant holders to do their bit to reduce their environmental impact, especially reducing carbon emissions, the main driver of climate change.