This FOA (Funding Opportunity Announcement) supports two priority areas in the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) research and development (R&D) portfolio. The first of these priority areas addresses new strategies for energy and resource recovery from waste streams.  The second priority area addressed by this FOA targets improved organisms and inorganic catalysts.

Apply to any of the following topics: (1) MSW Feedstock Technologies, (2) Robust Microbial Cells, (3) Robust Catalytic Processes, and (4) Community Scale Resource and Energy Recovery from Organic Wastes.

The Shine On Awards will recognize communications campaigns that are successful in increasing solar energy adoption and/or solar workforce recruitment and retention among a diverse target audience and that cross a variety of mediums, including digital, print, event, video, mobile, podcast, marketing, social media, audio, and more. Excellent campaigns will be able to show evidence that their campaign has had a positive, meaningful impact on their target audience. Examples of targeted, effective, and inclusive campaign goals could include but are not limited to:

• Increased solar adoption rates among the target audience,
• Savings on electrical bills among the target audience,
• Decreased energy burden among the target audience,
• Reduction in pollution or other environmental harm due to solar adoption in target communities or areas,
• Increased knowledge and positive sentiment among the target audience about the benefits of solar energy,
• Increased opportunities for the target audience to join, stay in, or advance in the solar workforce, or
• Increased solar jobs in the target communities or areas.

Winners will be publicly announced by the Department of Energy (DOE) and invited to participate in a DOE-hosted webinar on communications and outreach best practices. Winners’ best practices will also be used to develop a guide to encourage greater adoption of these practices. No cash prizes will be awarded.

Strengthening American Infrastructure (SAI) is an NSF Program seeking to stimulate human-centered fundamental and potentially transformative research aimed at strengthening America’s infrastructure. Effective infrastructure provides a strong foundation for socioeconomic vitality and broad quality of life improvement. Strong, reliable, and effective infrastructure spurs private-sector innovation, grows the economy, creates jobs, makes public-sector service provision more efficient, strengthens communities, promotes equal opportunity, protects the natural environment, enhances national security, and fuels American leadership. Achieving these objectives requires the integration of expertise from across all science and engineering disciplines. SAI focuses on how fundamental knowledge about human reasoning and decision-making, governance, and social and cultural processes enables the building and maintenance of effective infrastructure that improves lives and society and builds on advances in technology and engineering. Successful projects will represent a convergence of expertise in one or more SBE sciences deeply integrated with other disciplines to support substantial and potentially pathbreaking, fundamental research applied to strengthening a specific and focal infrastructure.

The Transformative Climate Communities Program (TCC) invests in community-led climate resilience projects in the California’s most disadvantaged communities. The program objectives are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve public health and the environment, and support economic opportunity and shared prosperity. TCC’s unique, place-based strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is designed to catalyze collective impact through a combination of community-driven climate projects in a single neighborhood. TCC Implementation Grants support an integrated set of projects within a neighborhood project area of approximately five square miles. Projects must reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly over time, leverage additional funding sources, and provide health, environmental and economic benefits to the community.

This is an opportunity to develop and deploy highly visible and replicable projects that demonstrate community-led, data-driven, and lasting innovation in local climate action through the Action Fund. ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability USA, Inc. (ICLEI USA) is accepting expressions of interest (EOI) from nonprofit and civil society organizations or consortiums of organizations (located in the US or US territories) that have a plan to accelerate the implementation of a city climate action plan while addressing inequality. Each of the two awardees or consortiums will receive $1,000,000 to fund activities identified by the awardee and ICLEI USA and supported by local government leadership.

The Sustainable Cities Accelerator is a virtual six-week, technical, business, and mentorship accelerator delivered by Freshwater Advisors and Public Spend Forum, along with other industry-leading partners. You will get to work with leading AWS technical experts to build and scale your cloud platform. Mobility and Transportation is the first cohort of 2022 for the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator.

The DOE will award $10 million for innovative solutions and strategies that maximize benefits and minimize impacts to wildlife and ecosystems from solar energy infrastructure.

DOE is interested in projects that will produce results with broad relevance to solar stakeholders by establishing methods, technologies, models, best management practices, or resources that facilitate ground-mounted photovoltaic energy generation, including utility-scale and community solar, or concentrating solar-thermal power that is compatible with surrounding wildlife. DOE is also interested in assessing and optimizing ecosystem benefits that solar energy facilities can provide, such as soil formation, pollination of food crops, and carbon sequestration.

To facilitate the formation of teams, SETO is providing a forum where interested parties can add themselves to a Teaming Partner List,  which allows organizations that may wish to apply to the FOA, but not as the prime applicant, to express interest to potential partners.

The DOE has released Phase II of the FY23 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. This funding opportunity is open to small businesses that have previously received DOE SBIR or STTR grants to provide additional opportunities to compete for funding to develop working prototypes of their discoveries.

The DOE has announced $1.5 million for new grants to colleges and universities that are underrepresented in DOE’s climate, Earth, and environmental science investments to help provide technical assistance to build capacity and achieve the goal of broadening institutional participation. 10-20 awards will be given.. Institutions with a history of training students from populations that are underrepresented in climate and environmental sciences, such as those served by Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and minority-serving institutions (MSIs), are encouraged to apply.

Up to approximately $1 billion will be made available for the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities projects through this funding opportunity, which will build markets and invest in America’s climate-smart farmers, ranchers, and forest owners to strengthen U.S. rural and agricultural communities. Through the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, USDA will support the production and marketing of climate-smart commodities through a set of pilot projects that provide voluntary incentives through partners to producers and land owners, including early adopters, to:

• implement climate-smart production practices, activities, and systems on working lands,
• measure/quantify, monitor and verify the carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits associated with those practices, and
• develop markets and promote the resulting climate-smart commodities.