The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of State and Community Energy Programs (SCEP) is seeking applications for the Energy Future Grants (EFG) to provide financial and technical assistance to support innovative – novel or early action – clean energy planning to benefit disadvantaged communities.
Donor Name: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
State: All States
County: All Counties
U.S. Territory: American Samoa, Guam, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 09/30/2023
Size of the Grant: $500,000
Grant Duration: 18 months
Details:
The Energy Future Grants (EFG) provides $27 million in financial assistance to support local, state, and tribal government-led partnership efforts that will advance clean energy program innovation. EFG seeks to enhance energy affordable and access for communities, ensuring the broad benefits of a clean energy economy—including heath, economic development and jobs and emissions reductions—flow to disadvantaged communities.
This FOA supports meaningful clean energy investments in communities. In accordance with Congressional direction, Energy Future Grants (EFG) will provide financial and technical assistance to local government, state, territorial, and/or tribal partnerships to design innovative, multijurisdictional deployment plans that maximize scalable energy affordability.
EFG applications will describe:
- the market, technical, financial, legal, regulatory, or administrative barriers to clean energy deployment addressed,
- the innovation approach or framework; and
- how project will speed and scale clean energy deployment at the local, regional and/or state level and in disadvantaged communities
Strategic Goals
The strategic goals for the EFG FOA are to:
- Establish collaborative and sustainable partnerships between local, tribal, and/or state governments, with a goal of at least 3-4 partners per applicant team.
- Develop innovative deployment-focused clean energy plans in and across the transportation, power, and/or building sectors.
- Prioritize plans that result in innovative (novel or early action) program designs that maximize energy affordability and provide other benefits of clean energy including economic development and jobs, housing affordability, health, mobility, and energy access.
- Ensure all plans have deployment strategies that benefit disadvantaged communities.
Topic Areas
Topic Area 1 -Transportation
- Proposals in this area should include planning approaches for reducing the energy intensity or greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector, with a focus on efforts to advance projects that benefit infrastructure, mobility, and net zero fuels. Innovative actions may include efforts to support on-and-off-road technology adoption and fuel use, including freight and aviation fleets. Teams should consider including US DOE Clean Cities Coalitions as partners.
Topic Area 2 – Power Sector
- Scalable innovations in the power sector including distributed energy delivery models that emphasize affordability and demand flexibility (e.g., pricing, rates, or tariffs). Other ideas include fuel switching to net zero carbon fuels, electrification, microgrids, supply chain and/or procurement strategies that support economic, health, and job benefits in disadvantaged communities. Teams should consider utilities or regulatory agencies as partners.
Topic Area 3 – Buildings
- Innovative strategies for creating net zero commercial and residential buildings, including opportunities in the multi-family sector or at community facilities. Approaches include the adoption of building engineering, construction, and retrofit programs that account for occupant behavior, technology integration, and procurement of energy efficient material or the wider use of performance standards to drive outcomes (electrification, decarbonization, resilience). Teams should consider experts in affordable housing or building performance as partners.
Strategic or Cross-Cutting Projects
- Applicants are not bound to a single area above. Any team should feel free to propose innovative ideas across the topics above (e.g., deployment of virtual power plants, distribution system needs to accommodate heavy duty electric vehicles)
Funding Information
DOE expects to make a total of approximately $27,000,000 of federal funding available for new awards under this FOA, subject to the availability of appropriated funds. DOE anticipates making approximately 50 awards under this FOA. DOE may issue one, multiple, or no awards. Individual awards will be approximately $500,000.
Period of Performance
DOE anticipates making awards that will run from 12 to 18 months for the initial period, comprised of one budget period. For those selected for phase two (down select), the period of performance will run from 12 to 24 months.
Eligibility Criteria
- Prime Recipients:
- local, state, and tribal governments Prime Recipients and Subrecipients must be legally formed in the United States, have majority domestic ownership and control, and have a physical location for business operations in the United States. The proposed prime recipient and subrecipient(s) must be domestic entities.
- To qualify as a domestic entity, the entity must be organized, chartered, or incorporated (or otherwise formed) under the laws of a particular state or territory of the United States; have majority domestic ownership and control; and have a physical place of business in the United States.
- The following types of domestic entities are eligible to participate as a prime recipient:
- State and local governmental entities, and tribal nations (ideally in teams of cities and states, multiple cities-towns, multiple tribes and cites, etc.).
- Subrecipients: Domestic Entities
- The proposed subrecipient(s) must be domestic entities. The following types of domestic entities are eligible to participate as a subrecipient of this FOA:
- State and local governmental entities, and tribal nations. It is suggested that applicants include at least 3-4 governmental partners or more.
- Non-profit entities including community-based organizations
- Institutions of higher education, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Minority Serving Institutions, Hispanic Serving Institutions, tribal colleges, community colleges and think tanks.
- Underserved businesses, including small and disadvantaged businesses, women-owned small businesses, service-disabled and veteran owned small businesses.
- Local or regional planning organizations.
- Utilities including investor-owned, cooperative/public power, and municipal as well as third-party or independent power providers.
- For-profit entities.
- The proposed subrecipient(s) must be domestic entities. The following types of domestic entities are eligible to participate as a subrecipient of this FOA:
- Incorporated Consortia
- Domestic incorporated consortia are eligible to participate as a subrecipient. For consortia incorporated (or otherwise formed) under the laws of a state or territory of the United States. Each consortium must have an internal governance structure and a written set of internal rules.
- Upon request, the consortium must provide a written description of its internal governance structure and its internal rules to the DOE Contracting Officer.
- Unincorporated Consortia
- Unincorporated Consortia must designate one member of the consortium to serve as the prime recipient/consortium representative. The prime recipient/consortium representative must qualify as a domestic entity.
- Upon request, unincorporated consortia must provide the DOE Contracting Officer with a collaboration agreement, commonly referred to as the articles of collaboration, which sets out the rights and responsibilities of each consortium member. This agreement binds the individual consortium members together and should include the consortium’s:
- Management structure;
- Method of making payments to consortium members;
- Means of ensuring and overseeing members’ efforts on the project;
- Provisions for members’ cost sharing contributions (optional); and
- Provisions for ownership and rights in intellectual property developed previously or under the agreement.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
