The goal of the Technical Assistance (TA) program is to assist transmission planners in incorporating energy equity as an objective in their planning. The TA will be targeted to transmission planners including Regional Transmission Operators (RTOs), Independent System Operators (ISOs), Power Market Administrators (PMAs), and utilities. The ITP TA will be delivered through a two-tiered approach—Tier I: Capacity Building and Tier II: Advanced Capacity Building. In Tier I, participants will learn how to better integrate energy equity in transmission planning through consultation, presentations, workshops and webinars, and other relevant resources. Tier II is designed to offer an advanced technical assistance program on energy equity in transmission planning through deep-dive analysis, modeling, and analytical support (e.g., framework development, proof of concept, etc.).

JUMP (Join the discussion, Unveil innovation, Make connections, Promote tech-to-market) into STEM is a building science competition for undergraduate and graduate students at U.S. colleges and universities. JUMP into STEM aims to attract bright students from a variety of majors to building science. The JUMP into STEM program seeks to inspire the next generation of building scientists, focusing on creative ideation and diversity in the building science field. The diversity objective is inclusive of an interdisciplinary mix of majors and representation by students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in STEM. Challenge topics for this year are Building Affordability, Managing Peak Power Demand in Building, and Taking Comfort to the Extreme.

DOE’s Grid Deployment Office (GDO) released an up to $325 million Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the Programa de Comunidades Resilientes, an initiative to improve community-level energy resilience for vulnerable and disadvantaged populations across Puerto Rico. Specifically, this program seeks to provide funding for solar and battery storage installations across two types of vital infrastructure: community healthcare facilities, as well as community centers and other common areas in public housing and privately owned subsidized multi-family properties.

Revolving Loan Funds (RLF) are used to provide no-interest or low-interest loans for eligible brownfield cleanups, subgrants for cleanups, and other eligible programmatic costs necessary to manage the RLF. Applications will be evaluated based on the extent to which the applicant demonstrates:

• a vision for the cleanup, reuse and redevelopment of brownfield sites and a strategy for leveraging resources to help accomplish the vision;
• the environmental, social, health and economic needs and benefits of the target area(s);
• strong community engagement;
• reasonable costs, eligible tasks, and appropriate use of grant funding;
• the capacity for managing and successfully implementing the cooperative agreement;
• and other factors.

The EPA’s Brownfields Program provides funds to empower states, Tribal Nations, communities, and nonprofit organizations to prevent, inventory, assess, clean up, and reuse brownfield sites. This funding opportunity will award assessment grants to develop inventories of brownfield sites, prioritize sites, conduct community involvement activities, conduct planning, conduct site assessments, develop site-specific cleanup plans, and develop reuse plans related to brownfield sites. A portion of the Assessment Grant funding must be used to conduct site assessments.

This funding opportunity provides funding for States and Tribes to develop inventories of brownfield sites, prioritize sites, conduct community involvement activities, conduct planning, conduct site assessments, develop site-specific cleanup plans, and develop reuse plans related to brownfield sites. Applicants may request funding up to $2,000,000 to address sites contaminated by hazardous substances (i.e., sites with potential contamination of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants) and/or petroleum (i.e., sites with potential petroleum contamination) throughout their jurisdiction. Recipients will be required to assess sites (a minimum of 10) throughout their geographic boundary(ies). All sites selected during the period of performance (i.e., sites that were not identified in the original workplan) must be located in an underserved and/or disadvantaged community.

Community-wide Assessment Grants are for communities that are beginning to address their brownfield challenges, as well as for communities that have ongoing efforts to bring sites into productive reuse. This funding opportunity will provide funding for developing inventories of brownfield sites, prioritizing sites, conducting community involvement activities, conducting planning, conducting site assessments, developing site-specific cleanup plans, and developing reuse plans related to brownfield sites. A portion of the assessment grant funding must be used to conduct site assessments.

The Good Jobs in Clean Energy Prize is designed to encourage coalition-building in communities across the country that focus on creating quality jobs and fostering an equitable and inclusive workforce in clean energy sectors.  Each coalition is required to include, at a minimum, one coalition representative from each of the five key stakeholder groups below:

1. Labor organizations
2. Clean energy employers
3. Community-based organizations
4. Public agencies
5. Education and workforce providers

These competing coalitions will develop and implement Coalition Action Plans that improve the quality of and expand access to good jobs in clean energy.

The purpose of the LCTM Program is to reimburse the incrementally higher costs of using or provide an incentive amount to eligible recipients for the use, in projects, of construction materials and products that have substantially lower levels of embodied GHG emissions, as described by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), associated with all relevant stages of production, use, and disposal as compared to estimated industry averages of similar materials or products, hereafter referred to as low carbon transportation materials.

The program will also serve to help eligible transportation agencies update or develop specification language and conduct identification activities needed to demonstrate materials are appropriate for use on Federal-aid construction projects.

Funds made available for the LCTM Program will be awarded for the use of substantially lower carbon materials and products on construction projects funded under title 23 U.S.C. and necessary work to identify appropriateness for use of these materials on eligible projects.

The NSF Trailblazer Engineering Impact Award (TRAILBLAZER) program supports individual investigators who propose novel research projects with the potential to innovatively and creatively address national needs and/or grand challenges, advance US leadership, and catalyze the convergence of engineering and science domains. TRAILBLAZER will support engineers and scientists who leverage their distinctive track record of innovation and creativity to pursue new research directions that are distinct from their previous or current research areas.

The Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) Program is committed to funding research and practice, with continued focus on investigating a range of informal STEM learning (ISL) experiences and environments that make lifelong learning a reality. This program seeks proposals that center engagement, broadening participation, and belonging, and further the well-being of individuals and communities who have been and continue to be excluded, underserved, or underrepresented in STEM along several dimensions. The current solicitation encourages proposals from institutions and organizations that serve public audiences, and specifically focus on public engagement with and understanding of STEM, including community STEM; public participation in scientific research (PPSR); science communication; intergenerational STEM engagement; and STEM media.