Many existing buildings have to be made sustainable. This offers opportunities to look more closely at what nature has to offer in the terms of materials, processes and inspiration for developing innovative solutions to make buildings climate-proof. This programme aims for an interdisciplinary and integrated approach for a sustainable built environment with attention to circularity, user comfort, health and biodiversity.

Purpose

Climate change is leading to more intense extreme weather conditions, which will result in more frequent long periods of heat and drought and heavy precipitation in short periods of time. This makes it necessary to regulate the climate in buildings in order to ensure user comfort and health, in which, in addition to heat retention, cooling and adaptation to (prolonged) dry and wet periods become more important.

The purpose of this Call for proposals is to stimulate innovative research that contributes to making the existing building stock in the Netherlands more sustainable. The primary purpose of the research is to reduce energy consumption - and thus CO2 emissions – in buildings and to minimize the environmental footprint of building materials and sustainability solutions through nature-based and nature-inspired solutions.

The added value of these solutions becomes greater when the solutions also contribute to circularity, biodiversity, living comfort and the health of occupants and users.

Who can apply

The main applicant and co-applicant(s) must carry out the requested research within a consortium that always includes two or more co-financiers in addition to themselves, possibly supplemented by one or more collaboration partners. All participants in the consortium must play an active role in formulating the research questions and in the design and implementation of the project.

Professors, university (senior) lecturers, lecturers and other researchers with a comparable position may act as main applicant or co-applicant. For the list of eligible organisations and conditions for employment, see section 3.1.1. of the Call for proposals.

What to apply for

For an application in this Call for proposals, a minimum of € 750.000 and a maximum of € 2.300.000 of NWO funding can be applied for in. With this, NWO finances maximally 80% of the total project budget; the rest of the funding must be contributed by the compulsory co-funding (see Section 3.5.6). NWO never funds less than 50% of the total project budget.

When to apply

Closing date for letter of intent: 23 January 2025.

Closing date full application: 20 March 2025.