UK Nature Accelerator

The UK Nature Accelerator (“the Accelerator”) is a technical assistance programme that provides Nature-based Solutions (NbS) projects with support in the final stages of investment readiness preparation. The Accelerator is delivered by Finance Earth’s Advisory team with the aim of developing NbS projects ready for investment from the UK Nature Impact Fund (“UK Nature”).

 

Expressions of Interest for the third round of the Accelerator are now closed. For any enquiries on future rounds of the programme, please contact the Accelerator team at uknature@finance.earth.
 

 
 

About the UK Nature Accelerator

Why has the Accelerator been developed?

The UK NbS investment market is rapidly growing but remains at a nascent stage with a limited pipeline of investment-ready projects. There is therefore a growing need for ‘last mile’ technical assistance and extra support in developing investment ready projects, including:

  • Refining investment cases
  • Completing financial models
  • Designing transaction structures and contracting mechanisms
  • Developing project and transaction documents
  • Finalising key project contractual terms

 

The lack of support available for these final stages is currently constraining the route to investment for high-integrity NbS projects, limiting the flow of investment into nature recovery in the UK. The Accelerator aims to prepare NbS projects for investment and unlock institutional, repayable finance at scale for nature recovery.

 

What will the Accelerator offer?

The Accelerator will provide the following services to enable participants to overcome the final hurdles involved in readying NbS projects for investment:

  • Technical Assistance: Support in developing financial models, transaction structures and contracting; everything you need to build and refine the project’s investment case
  • Capacity Building Support: Guidance on developing key in-house skills for successful project delivery so project developers can repeat the process themselves
  • Resources: Blueprint documentation and template models to allow project developers to understand how to deliver investment across more projects

 

The Accelerator currently supports the following NbS projects:

 

What is required to participate in the Accelerator?

Staff Time: The Accelerator is designed to be participant-led to enable participants to develop the required skills and capabilities needed to develop projects to investment readiness. As such, we require participants to assign 0.5 days per week resource throughout the Accelerator programme to ensure sufficient engagement and successful delivery. You can adapt this requirement as you see fit, for instance, the 0.5 FTE requirement can also be spread over 2-3 employees at the same organisation.

Information: Participants will need to gather sufficient information to complete the template financial model and investment case. For further detail on the informational requirements, see ‘Indicative Accelerator Entry Criteria’ below.

Potential Contribution: The Accelerator is part funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, with grants available for eNGOs. Depending on funder eligibility requirements, organisation types, and the number of participants, additional contributions may be requested from organisations.

 

Why choose the Accelerator?

The Accelerator will enable participants to:

  • Create investment ready nature recovery projects appropriate for institutional investment
  • Develop blueprint transaction structures and contracts that can be scaled and replicated
  • Build capabilities through guided investment readiness support from Finance Earth’s experienced advisory team
  • Enable collaboration and shared learnings to increase capability and capacity across the UK NbS sector

 
 

Applying to the Accelerator

The Accelerator operates in rounds taking place over 6-8 months, with Round 1 having commenced in June 2024 and Round 2 in January 2025.

The third round of the Accelerator, due to commence in September 2025, has now closed Expression of Interest applications. For any enquiries on future rounds of the programme, please contact the Accelerator team at uknature@finance.earth.

 

Application Process

Applications will go through a three-stage process to assess their suitability for the Accelerator:

  1. Initial Expression of Interest (EOI): The first stage is a high-level form to collect key information about your project, including location, size, and project type, and is designed to take only 10 minutes to complete. Information from the EOI will be used to perform an initial screening of projects.

    2.  

  2. Investment Readiness Assessment and Further Information Requests: Participants will then be required to complete a more detailed investment readiness assessment survey, which will be used to score the project’s level of investment readiness. Further information relating to the financial, operational, and environmental characteristics of the project will also be requested.

    3.  

  3. Funding Approval: The UK Nature Investment Management (IM) Team will assess information gathered in the previous stages to approve projects to be admitted into the Accelerator. A final assessment and eligibility checks will be carried out by the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

 
 

Indicative Accelerator Entry Criteria

To be eligible for the Accelerator, a project is required to target one of the three below environmental markets:

  • Woodland Creation
  • Peatland Restoration
  • Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG)

 

Projects should seek to meet the following criteria:

  • The target ecosystem service market is identified and assessed as eligible against the relevant code/ standard
  • The ecosystem service units to be generated over the lifetime of the project have been estimated
  • Provisional lifetime costings have been estimated with rationale underpinning assumptions
  • Key delivery partners identified
  • Require a minimum investment of £500,000 (project size generally above 10 ha)
  • Landowner engaged and supportive
  • There are no known or expected objections to the project from the local community or Local Planning Authority

 
 

Accelerator FAQ

Webinar

Many frequently asked questions are answered in the Accelerator (Round 3) Introductory Webinar. Please find the webinar recording here.
 
This webinar was hosted by the Ecosystems Knowledge Network (EKN), the award-winning, independent forum for harnessing the role of a healthy environment in people’s lives, and host of the Nature Finance Learning Hub.

How do you define a project?

A project is defined as a single site (or group of sites) controlled by one or controller (i.e. a freeholder or an organisation who has leasehold of the land for at least the project duration). Generally, this is based on a single ecosystem service income stream as each income stream has a different risk-return profile (different buyers, pricing, demand levels, sales timeframe, etc.).

Are Landscape Recovery scheme projects eligible for the Accelerator?

To be eligible for the Accelerator, the Landscape Recovery scheme would need to be broken down into specific sites to understand landownership, ecosystem service unit generation, and costs of delivery for each project.

If projects have successfully gone through the Accelerator, would they meet the UK Nature requirements for investment?

Whilst the Accelerator aims to support projects to reach investment readiness, it cannot guarantee UK Nature Investment Committee approval.

To find out more about the Accelerator, please get in touch with us at uknature@finance.earth.

 

Entry into the Accelerator does not guarantee investment by UK Nature. All investment decisions are made by the UK Nature Investment Committee, which is distinct to the technical support received via the Accelerator.

The contents of this page are not a financial promotion and none of the information on this page constitutes an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity. If you are in any doubt as to the appropriate course of action, we would recommend that you consult your own independent financial adviser, stockbroker, solicitor, accountant or other professional adviser.