University of California, Irvine researchers have a $1 million grant to help bring climate-friendly policies to the business world, in the university’s latest move into environmental programs.
The initiative—dubbed RADiCal—is seeking to accelerate the growth of companies focused on climate goals.
“This is not a feel-good initiative,” says UCI’s Chief Innovation Officer Errol Arkilic.
“These are commercial realities that we believe represent potential challenges for the business community to solve.”
RADiCal—short for the Resilience and Adaptation Development in California initiative—is designed to bolster the strengths of UCI and its partners to move climate action projects from ideas to real-world applications.
The program is led by UCI’s Beall Applied Innovation, where Arkilic is executive director.
“There are stakeholders that have to be involved in the acceptance of any innovation,” Arkilic told the Business Journal on Sept. 15.
The funding for RADiCal is part of a $15 million first phase of financing under the state’s $100 million University of California Climate Action Innovation and Entrepreneurship Awards, to seed climate-focused research and innovation.
‘Commercially Marketable’
“We have the ability not just to develop technical solutions, but also to identify what policy issues might be in the way of those technical issues being adopted or adoptable,” Arkilic said the day after the UCI initiative’s funding was announced.
He emphasized that a good idea alone isn’t enough; proposals must be “commercially marketable” or address a “real societal problem.”
The program’s first step will use collaborative workshops and events, combining subject matter experts and campus and industry voices, to exchange climate action knowledge, breakthroughs and market intelligence.
RADiCal’s second programming area will provide early stage commercialization funding to help accelerate promising climate solution projects towards market impact.
The program will use $300,000 of the $1 million for six grants of approximately $50,000 each.
Arkilic hopes early funded academic research will lead to millions in subsequent innovation support.
Workshops and related activities will receive $450,000 while $250,000 will go to personnel costs in the first round, which began on Sept. 15.
RevHub, Sustain SoCal
RADiCal also establishes the Orange County Climate Action Business Incubator, developed and operated by RevHub and Sustain SoCal, in partnership with UCI Beall Applied Innovation.
RevHub is Orange County’s first social enterprise incubator focusing on businesses with an emphasis on climate action and health equity. Sustain SoCal convenes industry and community to support clean technologies and sustainable economic development.
RevHub will provide a match of $200,000 to increase the resources available for the operations of the Climate Action Business Incubator.
Currently, over 30 UCI centers, institutes and labs are engaged in some aspect of climate action or sustainability research, with over $60 million in grant funding being managed specifically around climate-related projects.
The university said on Sept. 6 that a multidisciplinary team of researchers at UCI in collaboration with colleagues from University of California, Riverside and University of California, San Diego, will lead a project that enables tribes and community groups to partner with universities and land managers to reduce climate change risks.
The work is supported by a $5.5 million grant from the UC Office of the President.
