UK launches FASTA programme to scale sustainable farming tech

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The UK Agri‑Tech Centre, in collaboration with the Carbon Trust, launched the Food Agriculture System Technology Accelerator (FASTA) on 1 December 2025 to help UK innovators commercialise Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) solutions for sustainable farming. Agriculture contributes around 10% of UK greenhouse gas emissions, and credible MRV systems are essential for tracking, validating and reducing emissions in the sector. FASTA provides technical and commercial support to innovators to accelerate the adoption of these systems and unlock net‑zero financing and impact tracking. It opens to UK‑based innovators from January 2026.

Registrations for FASTA opened on 6 January 2026 and will remain open until 23 January. Successful applicants will access bespoke expert support alongside investor introductions to accelerate their MRV technologies towards market readiness.

In parallel, new analysis by the Carbon Trust (in partnership with UCL, Mott MacDonald and others) for DESNZ shows that innovation across key energy technologies could cut UK net‑zero transition costs by £203–348 billion between 2025 and 2050. The study highlights air‑source heat pumps, BECCS, DACCS and offshore wind as offering the largest system savings. Heat pumps alone could yield £110 billion in savings and £5.7 billion in GVA by mid‑century, while BECCS and DACCS contribute £75 billion and £62 billion in system savings respectively.

These findings underline the urgency of scaling emerging technologies now to avoid cost escalation later. Carbon Trust emphasises the need for strategic investment in supply chains, workforce skills and regulatory frameworks to support this scale‑up.

Meanwhile, the Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA), funded under DESNZ’s Net‑Zero Innovation Portfolio and delivered by the Carbon Trust with Jacobs and Innovate UK Business Connect, has awarded £7 million across 13 grants for industrial low‑carbon innovations including metalworking, heat recovery, and textiles recycling. These projects could save up to 4 million tonnes of CO₂ over 10 years roughly equivalent to emissions from the UK’s largest gas power station.

The Carbon Trust has also been re‑appointed to deliver a new phase of IEEA, with around £8 million in grant funding available to demonstrate energy and resource efficiency technologies across UK industry.

What this means:
The launch of FASTA signals growing recognition of agriculture’s role in achieving net‑zero. By accelerating MRV solutions, the programme could improve transparency in farming emissions and unlock meaningful decarbonisation. The energy innovation analysis serves as a clear call to action: a decade and more of investment now could yield savings of hundreds of billions and support hundreds of thousands of jobs by mid‑century. Finally, IEEA’s ongoing success illustrates how targeted funding can catalyse industrial deployment of green technologies, delivering tangible CO₂ reductions and paving the way for broader uptake.

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