Centre for Sustainable Area and Nature Use

Only approved Norwegian research organisations in binding collaboration with partners from other research organisations, the business sector, the public sector and other societal actors are eligible to apply. See the list of approved research organisations. 

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

• The Project Owner organisation must be an approved research organisation. 
• The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the application. 
• The Project Owner submits the application on behalf of all partners. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

• The project manager (centre manager) must document experience from managing large, complex projects. 
• The project manager must preferably be employed by the Project Owner, or alternatively by one of the Norwegian research partners.
•  Availability and planned time spent on the tasks of project manager, work package leaders and any other members of the centre management must be stated in the application. 
• The project manager and other project management's professional competence and suitability to carry out the project will be assessed by a peer panel. 

Requirements relating to partners 

The research in the centre will be carried out in binding collaboration between relevant research organisations, actors in Norwegian business and industry, the public sector, and other societal actors. See a more detailed description of cooperation and roles in the document Requirements and guidelines - Centre for Sustainable Area and Nature Use (link to come). 

• The centre must have at least two partners that are approved Norwegian research organisations, and preferably more.
•  The centre must have at least one foreign research partner, and preferably several. 
• The centre must have at least three Norwegian partners that are not research organisations, these are referred to as user partners, which may include the public sector, business and industry and other societal actors.
•  The application must be strategically supported by all partners. 
• All partners must actively contribute to the planning, follow-up and dissemination of results and to ensuring that new knowledge is put to use. 
  The centre must have a board where the majority of the members and the chairman of the board come from the user partners. 

In addition to the above, the centre may have foreign user partners. These are not be listed as partners or included in cost tables in the application form, but you must document how any foreign user partners will contribute to achieving the centre's goals in the project description. 

• The centre may have associated subcontractors if these are not in a relationship of dependence with the Project Owner or any of the partners, for example through a group relationship. They must operate at arm's length from these. 
• The Project Owner and partners must also be independent of each other. This means that one cannot have a controlling influence over the other. This applies both between the Project Owner and the partner, and between the partners.
• One and the same actor cannot have several roles in the centre, for example as a partner and subcontractor. 

We encourage the centre to establish a reference group or similar, to ensure a broader group of users and stakeholders. 

A centre with a large number of user partners will place great demands on the organisation of the centre. In such cases, we encourage applicants to differentiate between actors who actively participate in research and actors who primarily participate as "listening posts", "problem owners" or similar. The first group may have the status of user partners and be included as partners in the consortium, while the latter group may have a looser connection to the centre, for example in the above-mentioned reference group, and not be part of the consortium itself or the centre budget. 

This call does not allow for the use of R&D providers.

You can apply for support to cover the actual costs necessary to carry out the activity in the centre. You can find detailed and important information on the Research Council's website about what to enter in the project budget.  

You must set aside resources to present plans for communication work. 

The Project Owner must obtain information on costs from the centre's partners. These costs must be entered in the cost plan under the cost type to which they belong. 

The progress plan and budget tables in the application form must only cover the first five years (phase 1) of the centre period. See more information under "Scope of support". 

The following cost types should be used: 

• Payroll and indirect expenses (including research fellowships), which are costs incurred by the Project Owner and partners in the public sector, research organisations and Norwegian business and industry.  
• Other project expenses, which are costs for other activities necessary to carry out the centre's R&D activities. Any purchases from subcontractors must be entered here. All costs entered as "other operating expenses" must be specified in the application.  
• Equipment, which includes operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment necessary to carry out the project  

Both the research organisations and the user partners must work in effective collaboration and enter their costs under personnel and indirect costs, equipment or other operating costs. The item Procurement of R&D services in the application form should therefore not be used.  

The Research Council does not provide funding for major equipment investments or infrastructure under this call. 

Stays abroad for research fellows at the centre and stays for visiting researchers in Norway must be covered within the framework of the project. 

Scope of support 

• The centres can apply for a total of NOK 90 to 130 million spread over eight years, but will be allocated through two phases: 
  • Under this call, you are applying for funding for the first five years of the centre period (phase 1), i.e. 5/8 of the Research Council's funding.
  •  3/8 of the Research Council's funding will not be available until the last three years of the centre period (phase 2). Conditions for funding for the last three years will be made on the basis of a new application and an assessment of the work that has been done. See more information under "Treatment procedure".
•  Funding from the user partners must be at least 15% of the Research Council's funding. Both cash financing and financing in the form of the user partners' own work input in the centre (so-called in-kind) can be included in the user funding. 
• The Project Owner and other research partners in the centre may contribute with their own funding, but this is not a requirement. It is not possible to use funding from other Research Council funded projects as part of the funding from the host institution and research partners. The extent of any own funding from the research organisations is not emphasised in the application assessment. 

The state aid rules allow the Research Council to provide funding to partners that are registered in the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and have economic activity in Norway. How much can be awarded depends on the size of the enterprise and the type of research that is carried out. The following applies to this call: 

• Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs according to the EU definition) that are considered enterprises within the meaning of state aid law can receive support of up to 50 per cent of their costs in the centre. The support may be used to cover costs authorised by Article 25 of the GBER. Please note that under this call, funding is only awarded that corresponds to the level of support for industrial research (IF), even if the company(s) are involved in basic research in the project. 
• Large companies are encouraged to participate as partners, but must cover all their costs in the centre. 
• Public organisations can apply for up to 100 per cent support. If a public sector organisation is to be regarded as an undertaking for the purposes of state aid, the conditions set out in the call for proposals for support for SMEs and large enterprises apply. 

Costs of foreign partners 

The Research Council's allocation may cover the costs of the foreign research organisations. See Budgeting costs for partners abroad.  

We do not cover the costs of other foreign actors. These costs must therefore be kept out of the budget tables. However, you must mention the activities they will carry out, as well as their costs, in the project description. 

Prerequisites for the award of funding 

The projects must start between 01.04.2026 and 01.08.2026. The latest permitted project completion for phase 1 is 31.08.2034 

Support to the research organisations must go to their non-economic activity in the form of independent research carried out in actual collaboration with others. This aid therefore does not constitute state aid. The Research Council assumes that the necessary accounting separation between the organisations' economic and non-economic activities is in place. 

User partners who do not have their costs covered or only part of their costs must contribute with their own financing. 

The call for proposals has been notified as an aid scheme to the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) and has the reference GBER XX/2025/R&D&I. If an undertaking is to be reimbursed for part of its project costs as a partner in the project, this must be done in accordance with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014). In addition, the general conditions in Chapter I of the Regulation must be met. The scheme shall be practised in accordance with the EEA Agreement's state aid rules. In the event of any conflict between the announcement and the state aid rules, the latter shall take precedence. For the same reason, the call for proposals may also be adjusted.  

• Aid may not be granted to undertakings that have not complied with the requirements for repayment following a previous decision by the ESA/EU Commission declaring the aid illegal and incompatible with the internal market. Nor may aid be granted to undertakings in difficulty within the meaning of EEA law.  
• We expect that the research in the centre is carried out in actual collaboration as defined in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects. 
• There is a requirement for an annual project accounting report documenting accrued project costs and their financing. The Research Council's prerequisites for awarding and disbursing funding are set out in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects. 

Read more about state aid.  

In addition, you must be aware of the following if you should receive funding form the research council: 

• Grant recipients in research organisations and the public sector (Project Owners and partners) must have action plans for gender equality (GEPs) available on their websites. The requirement does not apply to the private sector, interest groups or the voluntary sector.  
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access for scientific articles, see Plan S - open access to publications.  
  For all projects that handle data, the Project Owner must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised application.Here you will find more information about requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us.  
• The Project Owner organisation decides which archiving solution(s) will be used for storing research data that emerges from the project. This must be specified in the project's data management plan 
  The Research Council's prerequisites for awards can also be found in our general terms and conditions for R&D projects on the information page What the contract involves.  

The application must be based on a mandatory project outline submitted by the deadline of 11 June at 13:00. 

You can change and submit the application for the main call (this call) several times until the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the mandatory attachments. When the application deadline expires, it is the version of the application that was submitted most recently that we process. 

• The application and all attachments must be written in English. 
• All attachments must be in PDF format. 
• The requirements relating to the Project Owner's research organisation must be met. 
• Requirements for the partners must be met. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description of a maximum of 20 pages. The project description must follow a fixed template that can be found at the end of the call. The project description must cover the entire project period of the centre (eight years). It must be clearly stated under "Implementation" in the project description what is to be done during the first five years (phase 1). This should be described in work packages and should be visualized in a Gantt chart. It must also describe what is planned for the last three years (phase 2) and explain how funds for the entire eight-year period are intended to be financed. This is done in a mandatory table. 
• CV for project manager (centre director) of maximum 4 pages, according to the established template that can be found at the end of the call. 
• A maximum of 10 CVs for the most important people/work package leaders in the project, of a maximum of four pages, according to the established template that can be found at the end of the call:
  • Researchers who are going to attach a CV must use the template "Template for CV researchers". 
  • Persons who are going to submit a CV and who do not work at a research organisation can use the template "Template for CV". 
• Declarations of intent from the Project Owner's organisation and all registered partners, i.e. both user partners and research partners. Letters of intent must be a maximum of three pages and in English. The declarations shall have the following content: 
  • The partner must confirm their intention to participate actively as a partner in the centre and describe how this will be done in practice.
  •  The partner must justify their interest in participating in the centre. In what way will the centre's activities benefit the partner and create opportunities that would not be there without the centre? 
  • What potential for innovation and sustainable value creation does the partner see in the expected results from the centre? 
  • How will the research results be applied? 
  • The partner must summarize its contribution to the centre in the form of knowledge, expertise and any funding, facilities and own efforts for both phase 1 and phase 2 of the centre period. 
  • The partner must account for its own long-term R&D plans and how it fits with what the centre is going to do (strategic anchoring). 
  • A declaration of intent from the Project Owner must also include a declaration from management stating that the organisation will assume the obligations entailed by a contract with the Research Council. The declaration must also explain how the centre is included in the Project Owner's organisation's academic strategy. 
• Overall budget overview for the entire centre period of eight years. 
  The overview will show how the costs will be distributed between the work packages (WP) and each of the research-performing partners, as well as how the costs will be financed.

Applications that do not meet the requirements above will be rejected. 

Optional attachments 

• Examples of up to three international peers who are presumed to be impartial to assess the application.

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested additional documentation. 

We will not consider documents and websites linked to in the application, or attachments other than those specified above. Be careful to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on what kind of templates it is possible to upload in the application form. 

The applications will be assessed in light of the purpose of the application type and in accordance with the following criteria:

The portfolio board's assessment 

When the portfolio board decides which projects are awarded funding, they will strive for a balanced centre portfolio that covers the breadth of the call and utilises the available announced amount 

• Once the applications have been received, we will carry out a preliminary assessment to check that all formal requirements have been met. Applications that do not meet the formal requirements will be rejected. The same applies to applications that are not based on an outline submitted by the outline deadline of 11 June 2025.
•  Applications that do not comply with the thematic limitations will be rejected by the portfolio board. 
• Approved applications will be considered by a panel composed of international academic peers and by peers with industry/societal expertise in relevant topics and subject areas. If necessary, we will also obtain external peer reviews to support the application processing. 
• The peer panel makes its assessments based on the criterias research quality, impact and implementation. They provide a consensus grade for each of these criteria.  
• After the panel deliberates, if the peer panel awards a mark of 4 or higher for all three criteria, the Research Council administration will assess the relevance of the criterion to the call. The threshold value can be raised based on how many applications are received, the grades after the referee panel has processed them, and the funding available.  
• The assessment of relevance and the panel's assessments are included in the application's overall mark, which provides an overall expression of the application's quality. 
• The portfolio board for Climate and Environment will make the decision on who will receive funding. 
• The funding decision and the consortium agreement cover the first 5 years of the centre period (phase 1). 

The centres will be allocated through two phases with funding for up to eight years in total. After five years (phase 1), an assessment is carried out to trigger the funding for the last three years (phase 2) of the centre period. Only the centres that have been allocated funds in phase 1 will be able to apply for their phase 2 funding. The application for phase 2 must contain necessary adjustments, and the budget must be detailed for both the remaining cost as well as funding from the Research Council and the user partners. Assessment and application for funding for phase two will take place in parallel with the completion of the work in phase one. More information can be found in the document Requirements and guidelines - Centre for Sustainable Area and Nature Use.

We expect to publish which applications will receive funding for phase 1 in April 2026. 

See also: How we process applications.