This notice announces that applications may be submitted for the 2024 NMFS-Sea Grant Fellowship in Population and Ecosystem Dynamics and Marine Resource Economics. When an interested student is applying, be sure to specify your project’s focus area in your title page: either Population and Ecosystem Dynamics (PED), or Marine Resource Economics (MRE).

Fellows will work on thesis questions of public interest and relevance to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under the guidance of NMFS mentors at participating NMFS Science Centers or Offices. The NMFS-Sea Grant Fellowship in Population and Ecosystem Dynamics and Marine Resource Economics meets NOAA’s healthy oceans goal of “marine fisheries, habitats, biodiversity sustained with healthy and productive ecosystems.

The purpose of the Food and Agriculture Service Learning Program is to increase the knowledge of agricultural science and improve the nutritional health of children. The program’s goal is to increase the capacity for food, garden, and nutrition education within host organizations or entities, such as school cafeterias and classrooms, while fostering higher levels of community engagement between farms and school systems by bringing together stakeholders from distinct parts of the food system. The initiative is part of a broader effort to not only increase access to school meals for low-income children, but also to dramatically improve their quality.

The Tribal Energy Development Capacity (TEDC) grant program seeks to develop the Tribal management, organizational and technical capacity needed to maximize the economic impact of energy resource development on Federally recognized tribal land. TEDC grants equip Federally recognized tribal entities to regulate and manage their energy resources through development of organizational and business structures and legal and regulatory infrastructure. Examples of projects TEDC grants may fund include establishment of Tribal business charters under Federal, state, or Tribal law with a focus on energy resource development; adoption and/or implementation of a secured transactions code; feasibility studies on forming a Tribal utility authority; feasibility studies on emergency response during heat and cold waves; and development of Tribal energy regulations.

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) and Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), in collaboration with its newly established Partnership Intermediary Agreement (PIA), called ENERGYWERX, will identify local organizations located in specific OCED project host communities interested in convening and leading logistics for multi-stakeholder engagement processes for federal projects.

This effort will assist selected energy demonstration project communities to engage with government and selected OCED project performers in a process to share their priorities and concerns across multiple workshops and forums. The selected organization(s) will be responsible for coordinating the event logistics and conducting engagement with local groups to support the process, which will be led and facilitated by a third-party entity identified by the Department of Energy. Activities may last up to a year and will include coordination with a range of groups –including third-party facilitators, local industry partners leading projects, local community groups, and Department of Energy officials – as well as event planning and relationship building with local groups.

In this FOA, OCED is seeking projects that can demonstrate that aggregated and coordinated distributed energy resources (DERs) can provide reliable, predictable grid services for a wide range of system configurations. The program goal is to build confidence that the design, control, and compensation approaches developed can be readily applied to other portions of the distribution grid and extended to other mixes of DERs, potentially extending the value of this approach to a more diverse set of communities, individuals, and entities as the distribution system continues to change.

This FOA makes available approximately $50 million in federal funds for transformative, at-scale projects within distribution systems that demonstrate approaches to integrate grid-edge renewable and distributed energy systems with broader energy networks. DOE will fund up to four (4) projects with an award size of at least $10 million and no more than $25 million in federal funds. Each award is required to provide a minimum of 50% non-federal cost share. Projects are anticipated to have a maximum period of performance of 8 years.

The program aims to improve how transit agencies deliver capital construction projects. The ADCMS program will fund demonstrations to accelerate the adoption of field-tested digital platforms to reduce costs and improve the delivery of transit infrastructure projects. Digital systems for construction management provide a technology solution for workers throughout the infrastructure project, enabling them to perform tasks faster, more safely, smarter, and more accurately.

FTA is seeking an organization to identify and demonstrate digital construction management tools to better manage transit construction projects, in partnership with at least two transit agencies. This effort will contribute to a best practices document to guide broader implementation of digital systems.

DOE’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity is administering the Low-Income Communities Bonus Credit Program in partnership with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the IRS.  The bonus credit provides a 10 or 20 percentage point increase to the investment tax credit for qualified solar and wind energy facilities with a maximum net output of less than five megawatts (AC). DOE will review applications and make recommendations to the IRS, which will allocate to up to 1.8 gigawatts (GW) of eligible solar and wind capacity per year.

A 10-percentage point increase is available to eligible solar and wind facilities that are installed in low-income communities or on Indian land and a 20 percentage point credit increase is available to eligible solar and wind facilities that are part of a qualified low-income residential building or a qualified low-income economic benefit project.

Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) supports states, local communities, tribes and territories as they undertake hazard mitigation projects, reducing the risks they face from disasters and natural hazards.

The program’s guiding principles are supporting communities through capability- and capacity-building; encouraging and enabling innovation; promoting partnerships; enabling large infrastructure projects; maintaining flexibility; and providing consistency.

Innovation Crossroads, a Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is the Southeast’s only entrepreneurial research and development program based at a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory. Innovation Crossroads supports and mentors entrepreneurial researchers whose early-stage innovations are presently too challenging or technically uncertain to pursue in a venture capital-financed startup. Innovators are selected for the program through an annual competition. Innovation Crossroads embeds innovators at ORNL for up to two years for entrepreneurial mentorship and to conduct cooperative research and development with the intention of incubating and translating innovations from proof-of-concept to proof-of-product.