Awards resulting from the FOA will focus on enhancing MSI programs to help foster a sustainable and diverse DOE Environmental Management (EM) Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce pipeline. The awards will also aid in promoting the development of a nationally engaged scientific and engineering workforce that will lead to future career pathways in the DOE EM complex for underrepresented groups. The total estimated value of the FOA is $24,500,000 and resulting financial assistance awards will have periods of performance ranging from 12-36 months.

EPA anticipates awarding approximately $400 million in Clean School Bus (CSB) funding under this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), subject to the availability of funds, the quantity and quality of applications received, and other applicable considerations. To ensure a healthy grant competition, this NOFO includes two sub-programs, one for school district and Tribal applicants (School District Sub-program) and one for thirdparty applicants (Third-Party Sub-program) to serve at least four school district beneficiaries. EPA is providing two separate competitions under this single NOFO to address the unique needs and concerns of diverse recipients and encourage participation in the CSB grants program.

The Manufacture of Advanced Key Energy Infrastructure Technologies (MAKE IT) Prize aims to catalyze domestic manufacturing of critical clean energy technology components, moving manufacturing facilities from planning to shovel-ready and enabling strategies for vibrant manufacturing activities in communities. This prize, developed by the Office of Technology Transitions in partnership with the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and administered by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, has a prize pool of approximately $30 million spread across two tracks—the Facilities Track and the Strategies Track.

The Facilities Track accelerates clean energy technology manufacturing plant development and helps support establishing a robust, secure domestic supply chain for components deemed critical for the commercialization of clean energy technologies. This track invites U.S.-based entities to complete and submit the work necessary for a shovel-ready manufacturing facility for specific clean energy technology components.

The Manufacture of Advanced Key Energy Infrastructure Technologies (MAKE IT) Prize aims to catalyze domestic manufacturing of critical clean energy technology components, moving manufacturing facilities from planning to shovel-ready and enabling strategies for vibrant manufacturing activities in communities. This prize, developed by the Office of Technology Transitions in partnership with the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and administered by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, has a prize pool of approximately $30 million spread across two tracks—the Facilities Track and the Strategies Track.

The Strategies Track aims to help build interest and engagement around manufacturing clean energy technologies and expand the potential for more clean energy jobs and economic opportunity. In this track, competitors will  develop a roadmap to promote clean energy manufacturing activity in their region and provide a statement of interest from an entity interested in establishing a facility in their region.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is launching the HBCU Clean Energy Education Prize to help develop advanced clean energy programming opportunities and connections for HBCUs across the United States. The prize focuses on three primary goals:

1. Inspire K-12 and community college students to engage with and learn about clean energy subjects through HBCU-hosted educational programs.
2. Initiate partnerships between HBCUs and other universities with proven clean energy focused programs to build new cross-university degree and certificate programs.
3. Integrate and build programming between university and industry partners to advance career opportunities for HBCU students in the clean energy space.

This FOA will fund research in three (3) Topics Areas that develop technologies to address emerging challenges and enhance the benefits of variable renewable energy sources (VRE), inverter-based resources (IBR), and distributed energy resources (DER), in utility long-term planning activities and the daily operation of the grid. The new state-of-the-art planning and operations tools developed under this FOA will enable solar energy to be more optimally utilized over time and allow it to be utilized in place of traditional generation, providing Americans with more cheap and secure sources of clean energy.

• Topic Area 1: System Planning Tools for Future Power Systems
• Topic Area 2: Variability Management in Grid Operations
• Topic Area 3: Rapid System Health and Risk Assessment Tools for Grid Operators

The American-Made Sunny Awards for Equitable Community Solar (The Sunny Awards) is a $200,000 prize competition that will recognize community solar portfolios and programs that employ or develop best practices to increase equitable access to the meaningful benefits of community solar for subscribers and their communities. Community solar is any solar project or purchasing program in which the benefits of a solar project flow to multiple customers such as individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and other groups, within a certain geographic area.

Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) offers peer-learning cohorts to advance local clean energy goals. Cohorts are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and managed by NREL with support from the World Resources Institute. Peer-learning cohorts are multi-community engagements that convene regularly for approximately 6 months to exchange strategies and best practices, learn in a collaborative environment, and workshop policy or program proposals, action plans, or strategies to overcome challenges around a common clean energy transition topic.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) announced the Small Innovative Projects in Solar (SIPS) 2023 funding opportunity. This funding opportunity will award $6.5 million for seedling R&D projects that focus on innovative and novel ideas in photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) and are riskier than research ideas based on established technologies.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is releasing this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to solicit applications in accordance with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. This FOA represents a more than $6 billion opportunity to catalyze high-impact, large-scale, transformational advanced industrial facilities to significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in energy-intensive industrial subsectors. DOE expects to award up to approximately 65 projects in high GHG-emitting industries and for cross-cutting technologies.

The Fermi Award is bestowed by the President of the United States to an individual or individuals of international stature in recognition of exceptional scientific, technical, policy, and/or management achievements related to the broad missions of the U.S. Department of Energy and its programs. Established in 1956 by President Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission, the Fermi Award is given to inspire people of all ages, through the examples of Enrico Fermi, the 1938 Nobel Laureate in physics, and the Fermi Award laureates who followed in his footsteps, to explore and open new scientific and technological realms. The Fermi Award is administered on behalf of the White House by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. A Fermi Award laureate receives:

A citation signed by the President of the United States and the Secretary of Energy;
A gold-plated medal bearing the likeness of Enrico Fermi; and
A $100,000 honorarium (if there is more than one laureate named, the honorarium is shared equally).

The INCITE program promotes transformational advances in science and technology for compute and/or data-intensive large-scale research projects such as scientific modeling, simulation, and data analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) campaigns. INCITE projects are awarded large allocations of computer time and supporting resources at the Argonne and Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (LCF) centers, operated by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. INCITE seeks research challenges requiring capability computing from diverse areas: production simulations, compute intensive machine or deep learning applications, or large-scale data analysis that use a large fraction of the LCF systems and cannot be performed on less capable resources. INCITE supports high-impact simulation, data and AI approaches which require the unique architectural infrastructure, high performance storage and networking capabilities available at the LCF centers.