The Energizing Rural Communities Prize is being offered by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) to incentivize the development of clean energy projects in rural or remote areas of the United States.
Donor Name: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Award
Deadline: 05/24/2023
Size of the Grant: $200,000
Details:
The Energizing Rural Communities Prize challenges individuals and organizations to build partnerships and develop finance plans that improve rural or remote energy systems.
The prize offers a $15 million cash prize pool to kickstart development of clean energy projects. This prize is intended to incentivize competitors to take the first steps necessary to develop a clean energy project. The competitor should have an idea for a future clean energy project, but no construction is required as part of this prize.
This prize seeks to:
- Demonstrate innovative and replicable partnership and financial mechanisms that act as initial steps toward clean energy projects.
- Better prepare rural or remote communities to secure funding for clean energy projects, either through future Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas (ERA) funding opportunities or other public or private funding sources.
- Identify, understand, and further develop activities that prepare communities to complete clean energy projects.
- Build trust and strengthen the networks between and within rural and remote communities in support of energy improvements aligned with DOE’s Justice40 priorities.
The ERA Program aims to fund clean energy projects with three specific goals:
- Deliver measurable benefits to energy customers in rural or remote areas by funding energy projects that lower energy cost, improve energy resilience, and/or reduce environmental harm.
- Demonstrate new rural or remote energy system models using climate-resilient technologies, new business structures that promote economic resilience, new financing mechanisms, and/or new community engagement best practices.
- Build clean energy knowledge, capacity, and self-reliance in rural America. This prize is a cornerstone of the ERA Program and is intended to provide early funding for clean energy project development preparation. In addition to this prize, DOE intends to issue additional funding opportunities for constructing clean energy projects under the ERA Program.
Successful competitors will propose partnership and financial activities that advance clean energy projects in rural or remote communities for the purpose of:
- Improving the overall cost-effectiveness of energy generation, transmission, or distribution systems
- Siting or upgrading transmission and distribution lines
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions
- Providing or modernizing electric generation facilities
- Developing microgrids
- Increasing energy efficiency
Prize Goals
This prize contains two individual tracks: PARTNER and FINANCE. The goals of each track are:
- Partner Track Goals
- Facilitate new or existing partnerships that enable development of clean energy projects in rural or remote communities. Successful competitors will create connections that lead to collaborative efforts for the development of clean energy projects in rural or remote communities. Collaborative efforts could include providing engineering services to advance project concepts, encouraging multiple communities to aggregate similar energy projects to unlock economies of scale, or facilitating equipment acquisition.
- Finance Track Goals
- Connect communities to capital for current or future clean energy projects by developing innovative and functional business models, new approaches to financing clean energy projects, the expansion of existing business models to new rural and remote areas, and innovative ways to leverage other fiscal incentives such as tax credits.
Funding Information
Track1
Phase One Prizes
- PARTNER: $10 million cash prize pool
- Up to 60 cash prizes of $100,000 each and in-kind mentorship services
- FINANCE: $5 million cash prize pool
- Up to 30 cash prizes of $100,000 each and in-kind mentorship services
Track2
Phase Two Prizes
- PARTNER: $10 million cash prize pool
- Up to 20 awards of $200,000 each, selected based on plan implementation
- FINANCE: $5 million cash prize pool
- Up to 10 awards of $200,000 each, selected based on plan implementation
Eligibility Criteria
The competition is open only to private entities (for-profits and nonprofits), non-federal government entities such as states, counties, tribes, and municipalities, academic institutions, and individuals, subject to the following requirements:
- Private entities must be incorporated in and maintain a primary place of business in the United States with majority domestic ownership and control.
- Academic institutions must be based in the United States.
- An individual prize competitor or group of competitors who are not competing as part of an incorporated private entity must all be United States citizens or legal permanent residents.
- Individuals competing as part of an incorporated private entity may participate if they are legally allowed to work in the United States.
- DOE employees, employees of sponsoring organizations, members of their immediate families (e.g., spouses, children, siblings, or parents), and persons living in the same household as such persons, whether or not related, are not eligible to participate in the prize.
- Individuals who worked at DOE (federal employees or support service contractors) within six months prior to the submission deadline of any contest are not eligible to participate in any prize contests in this program.
- Federal entities and federal employees are not eligible to participate in any portion of the prize.
- DOE National Laboratory employees cannot compete in the prize.
- Entities and individuals publicly banned from doing business with the U.S. government, such as entities and individuals debarred, suspended, or otherwise excluded from or ineligible for participating in federal programs, are not eligible to compete.
- Entities and individuals identified as a restricted party on one or more screening lists of Department of Commerce, State, and the Treasury are not eligible to compete. See Consolidated Screening List.
- This prize competition is expected to positively impact U.S. economic competitiveness. Participation in a foreign government talent recruitment program7 could conflict with this objective by resulting in unauthorized transfer of scientific and technical information to foreign government entities. Therefore, individuals participating in foreign government talent recruitment programs of foreign countries of risk are not eligible to compete. Further, teams that include individuals participating in foreign government talent recruitment programs of foreign countries of risk8 are not eligible to compete.
- As part of your submission to this prize program, you will be required to sign the following statement: I am providing this submission package as part of my participation in this prize. I understand that I am providing this submission to the Federal Government. I certify under penalty of perjury that the named competitor meets the eligibility requirements for this prize.
For more information, visit Energizing Rural Communities Prize.
