Powering a Just Energy Transition Green Minerals Challenge

The Just Energy Transition (JET) Minerals Challenge is seeking early-stage ideas, prototypes, and/or proven solutions seeking validation and scaling that target and reduce corruption across green mineral supply chains.

This call for innovations will identify solutions that counter corruption and strengthen transparency, accountability, and integrity in the global rush to meet the unprecedented demand for green minerals. The Challenge will offer a combination of financial and nonfinancial resources to support a diverse range of solutions and innovators in both the testing and scaling of approaches, as well as helping innovators overcome barriers to addressing corruption within green mineral supply chains.

JET Minerals Challenge Tracks

• The JET Minerals Challenge will identify, support, and reward promising and successful innovations, operating across global, regional, and/or local levels, which align with one or more of the following tracks:

• Constraining Opportunities for Corruption

  • Corruption thrives in the shadows that obscure how mining licenses, concessions, and rights are obtained; the terms of the deals; what mining royalties are received and where they go; and who ultimately benefits. In addition, it is often difficult to trace the journey of minerals from mine site to smelter and refinery to manufacturers to consumers. Hidden by systematic inefficiencies and a lack of adequate information, corrupt actors - often enabled by professional facilitators such as bankers, lawyers, and accountants - exploit the demand for green minerals to amass wealth for themselves and their networks.

  • Innovative solutions in this track will constrain opportunities for corruption by simplifying systems, increasing competition on a level playing field, and promoting transparency across green mineral supply chains.

• Raising the Costs of Corruption

  • There is a notable contrast between the massive volumes of mineral wealth flowing out of a country and the limited investment going back into the communities and countries from which they came. Corruption can also be visibly out in the open - from the houses purchased from the proceeds of bid rigging or bribes, to the notable absence of an “agreed upon” tarmac road, to luxurious yachts crossing the globe. Systematic weaknesses, power imbalances, and impunity often “protect” powerful political and economic elites - including senior government officials and unscrupulous companies, state-owned enterprises, politically-exposed persons, and their transnational corrupt partners - from experiencing any real consequences (legal, economic, political, or reputational) of their criminal actions.

  • Innovative solutions in this track will raise the costs of corruption by promoting accountability and challenging the status quo of pervasive supply chain exploitation.

• Incentivizing Integrity

  • With current demand far exceeding supply, green minerals are a “seller’s market” with fierce competition. Producing countries have options for the sale of their resources and corrupt public officials may woo or be enticed by strategic competitors offering deals that align with their own personal interests or short-term gains at the expense of long-term, inclusive and sustainable economic growth. For companies all along the supply chain, from mining companies extracting the minerals to the well-known corporations that bring them to your home or garage, it may be cumbersome at best - or competitively disadvantageous at worst - for responsible actors to ensure integrity throughout the green mineral supply chain.

  • Innovative solutions in this track will incentivize public and private integrity among producers and consumers of mineral products, cultivating a race to the top among companies utilizing green minerals.

Prize Details

• Financial Awards:

  • The JET Minerals Challenge Awardees will receive grant funding across three funding tiers, based on their concept note and application request, the maturity of their innovative solutions and the activities they intend to implement. The maximum duration of the grants will be 24 months.

  • Awardees will be eligible to receive grants ranging in size from $25,000 - $400,000 to support the development, testing, and scaling of their innovations.

  • Tier 1: $25,000 - $50,000

    • This tier of funding is for early, idea-stage innovations to support innovation development, validation, and piloting.

  • Tier 2: $50,000 - $200,000

    • This tier of funding is for existing innovations seeking support for prototyping, testing, and refinement, or existing innovations interested in shifting to a new market, supply chain, geography, or context.

  • Tier 3: $200,000 - $400,000

    • This tier of funding is for proven innovations seeking market validation, public or private partnerships, and scaling.

  • Total size of award pool: Up to $3 million in available grant funding. The exact number and total amount of awards is subject to the availability of funds

  • Additional funding may be available to JET Minerals Challenge Awardees to advance promising innovations beyond this Challenge.

  • Number of awards: Flexible, but at least one across each tier (they estimate a total of five to ten awards).

• Non-Financial Awards:

  • Participation in the Summit for Democracy and the JET Minerals Challenge Innovation Bootcamp

  • Mentorship, Networking, and Global Visibility

  • Technical Assistance

Why should you apply?

• Join a Movement and Network of Game Changers Focused on Fighting Corruption Globally:

  • Both semi-finalists and awardees will join a growing network of solvers, entrepreneurs, technical experts, and private sector partners with a shared purpose of advancing evidence and best practices, sharing learning, and building collective action. JET Minerals Challenge networks will offer peer to peer exchange, learning events, and other ongoing resources.

• Receive Funding, Technical Assistance and Acceleration Support:

  • Awardees will be eligible to receive grants ranging in size from $25,000 - $400,000 to support the development, testing, and scaling of their innovations.

  • Awardees are eligible for non-financial support to help accelerate their solution toward their intended impact and effective and compliant management. USAID will offer basic technical support to ensure awardees understand and comply with the terms of the award. The Challenge will provide additional levels of technical support linked to the needs of awardees and the funding tier of their award. The Challenge will work with selected awardees to analyze barriers to the growth and impact of their solutions, and develop support that provides a clear, actionable path through co-creation of targeted milestones that allow the awardees to reach technical, financial, and impact milestones.

Geographic Focus

• Concept notes may be global or transnational in nature or focus on a specific country. There is no predetermined geographic focus, however, global, transnational, or country-specific innovations should be focused on geographies with deposits of the 29 green minerals where USAID is operational.

• Concept notes will not be accepted for country-specific innovations to be implemented in the following countries: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Cambodia, Cuba, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nicaragua, North Korea, the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.

Ineligible

• Political parties, groups, or institutions, or their subsidiaries or affiliates;

• Any entity found to have materially misused Challenge partners’ funds in the past;

• Any entity affiliated with any of the Grand Challenge implementing partners, Tetra Tech and Resonance Global, its officers or directors, or employees, or their immediate families;

• Any entity affiliated with USAID staff, USAID institutional support and professional support contractors and their families;

• Any governmental organization;

• Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs);

• Public International Organizations as defined by USAID;

• Public universities; and

• Individuals.