DOE and EPA announce $9.4M for Inflation Reduction Act funding opportunity for Advanced Biofuels
Announcement Type: Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA)
Opportunity: Inflation Reduction Act Funding for Advanced Biofuels
Overview and Eligible Uses: This investment will support high-impact biofuel technology projects to improve the performance and reduce the cost of biofuel production technologies, scale up production systems in partnership with industry, and accelerate the nation’s bioeconomy.
The FOA includes up to $9.4M in federal funding to achieve these outcomes by supporting two topic areas focusing on research and development to advance technologies from the bench scale to pilot scale.
Topic Area 1: Pre-Pilot Scale Up of Integrated Biorefinery Technologies
This topic area will support the development of scaling up key process step(s) already developed at the bench-top scale. The funding opportunity would require the verification of the work at the bench-top scale, and then support the development of the process step(s) at the pilot-scale. Work would entail designing and building the pilot-scale process step(s) and then performing an operational test. The proposed key step(s) are not required to comprise a fully integrated pilot scale unit by the end of the project, but rather can be utilized to support future integration of the entire process at pilot or demonstration scale.Topic Area 2: Biointermediate Processing Toolbox
This topic area will support the development and pilot-scale testing of key technology innovations for processing biointermediates, which are feedstocks that have been partially converted at one facility but are then sent to a separate facility for their final processing into a renewable fuel; for example, co-processing biocrudes in legacy petroleum refinery infrastructure. Work would entail employing a technology feature to improve biointermediate processing, and then performing a pilot-scale operational test, along with employing a method to measure the biogenic carbon in the co-processed fuel if the biointermediate is co-processed with petroleum.
Amount: DOE anticipates making 3-5 awards totaling $9.4M of federal funding available under this FOA. Individual awards may vary between $0 and $2M for Topic Area 1 and between $0 and $9.4M for Topic Area 2.
Award Type: DOE envisions awarding one or more financial assistance awards in the form of cooperative agreements lasting approximately 36 months.
Eligible Applicants: Domestic businesses, educational institutions, and nonprofits are eligible to apply for funding.
Key Dates: An informational webinar will be hosted on March 4, 2024 at 3:00 PM ET. Concept papers must be submitted by 5:00 PM ET on March 22, 2024 and full applications must be submitted by 5:00 PM ET on May 24, 2024.
Key Links:
March 4, 2024 Webinar registration
Full FOA on DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Exchange
For a full list of currently available grant programs under the Infrastructure Law and other helpful tools, take a look at our Helpful Resources page.
This tracker will continue to send updates when new funding opportunities are announced.