The Department of Commerce (DOC) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) invites small businesses to submit research proposals under this NOFO. Firms with the capability to conduct research and development (R&D) in any of the research topic areas listed in Section 9.0 of this announcement and to commercialize the results of that R&D are encouraged to participate. Topics include:

• Extreme Events and Cascading Hazards
• Coastal Resilience
• The Changing Ocean
• Water Availability, Quality, and Risk
• Effects of Space Weather
• Monitoring and Modeling for Climate Change Mitigation

The National Conservation Lands financially support studies aimed at increasing our
understanding of the resources present on BLM lands and the effectiveness of BLM’s resource management decisions. The program seeks to develop and maintain strong partnerships with State, local, university, tribal, and non-profit stakeholders in shared conservation stewardship by engaging partners in conducting management-focused research on the National Conservation Lands. Results from these studies on National Conservation Lands will inform management strategies utilized throughout BLM as well as other land management entities.

The Management Studies Support Program for National Conservation Lands will utilize partnerships with University, State, local, tribal, and non-profit entities to gather the best available data and synthesize information to support BLM’s land management decision processes and co-stewardship initiatives.

The objective of this NOFO is to invite States, Indian Tribes, irrigation districts, water districts, and other organizations with water or power delivery authority to leverage their money and resources by cost sharing with Reclamation on small-scale on-the-ground projects that seek to conserve, better manage, or otherwise make more efficient use of water supplies. Proposed projects that are supported by an existing water management and conservation plan, System Optimization Review, or other planning effort led by the applicant are prioritized. This prioritization will help ensure that projects funded under this NOFO are well thought out, have public support, and have been identified as the best way to address water management concerns. Reclamation has simplified the evaluation criteria and streamlined the application process for this category of WaterSMART Grants to ensure that the process works for smaller entities.

The 2024 BENEFIT FOA will invest up to $30M (subject to appropriations) across four topic areas: Topic 1: Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning and Water Heating Technologies with improved materials, components, equipment design, and engineering, lower cost manufacturing processes, and easier installation. Topic 2: Innovative, Replicable, and Low-Cost Roof and Attic Retrofits Technologies for affordable and scalable roof and attic retrofits that improve energy efficiency and address air and water infiltration. Topic 3: Building Resilience and Capacity Constraints Novel approaches to maintain essential loads during blackouts and add power capacity to buildings without the need for major infrastructure upgrades; localized thermal management systems and thermally resilient building envelopes to provide cooling and overheating protection against extreme heat events. Topic 4: Commercial Lighting Retrofit Advancements Low-cost, high-quality retrofit solutions for lagging sectors in energy-efficient lighting adoption (schools, certain commercial buildings).

Chesapeake B-WET is a competitive grant program that supports existing, high-quality environmental education programs, fosters the growth of innovative programs, and encourages capacity building and partnership development for environmental literacy efforts throughout the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed states. Successful projects advance the environmental literacy goal of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement and the NOAA Education Strategic Plan by building capacity within organizations and networks that work at the state- or multi-state level to support hands-on environmental education for students and related professional development for teachers, administrators, and other educators who serve formal K-12 audiences. Through this funding announcement, NOAA is soliciting proposals that support Statewide K-12 Environmental Literacy Capacity Building.

The SPARKS program—short for Spurring Projects to Advance energy Research and Knowledge Swiftly—provides a rolling opportunity for the rapid support of early-stage applied research to explore innovative new concepts with the potential for transformational and disruptive changes in energy technology. SPARKS awards are intended to be flexible and may take the form of analyses or exploratory research that provides ARPA-E with useful information for the subsequent development of focused technology programs. Awards under the SPARKS program may also support proof-of-concept research to develop a unique technology concept, either in an area not currently supported by the agency or as a potential enhancement to an ongoing focused technology program. The broad objective of SPARKS is to identify disruptive concepts in energy-related technologies that challenge the status quo and represent a leap beyond today’s technologies. An innovative concept alone is not enough; the idea must also have the potential to be impactful—meaning that, if successful, it represents a fundamentally new paradigm in energy technology with the potential to make a significant impact on ARPA-E’s mission areas.

DOL will award grants through a competitive process to organizations providing pre-apprenticeship services that support education, occupational skills training, and employment services to opportunity youth, ages 16 to 24, who are performing meaningful work and service to their communities.  The YouthBuild program model prepares participants for quality jobs in a variety of careers, in diverse industry sectors, particularly in infrastructure sectors, and includes wrap-around services such as mentoring, trauma-informed care, personal counseling, transportation supports, and employment preparation – all key strategies for addressing violence in communities.  YouthBuild applicants must include construction skills training and may include occupational skills training in other in-demand industries.  This expansion into additional in-demand industries is the Construction Plus component. Eligible applicants for these grants are public or private non-profit agencies or organizations, including consortia of such agencies or organizations.  These organizations include rural, urban, or Native American/Tribal entities that have previously served opportunity youth in a YouthBuild or other similar program.

The purpose of the FCT competitive grant program is to make annual grants available to eligible airports for airport-owned airport traffic control tower (ATCT) projects that address the aging infrastructure of the nation’s airports. The FAA will consider ATCT projects that sustain, construct, repair, improve, rehabilitate, modernize, replace, or relocate non-approach control towers; or acquire and install air traffic control, communications, and related equipment to be used in those towers; or construct a remote tower certified by the FAA including acquisition and installation of air traffic control, communications, or related equipment.

The BER ESS program goal is to advance an integrated, robust, and scale-aware predictive understanding of terrestrial systems and their interdependent microbial, biogeochemical, ecological, hydrological, and physical processes. To support this goal, the program uses a systems approach to develop an integrative framework to elucidate the complex processes and controls on the structure, function, feedbacks, and dynamics of terrestrial systems, that span from molecular to global scales and extend from the bedrock through the soil, rhizosphere, and vegetation to the atmosphere. The ESS program scope advances foundational process knowledge with an emphasis on understudied ecosystems. Supported research emphasizes ecological and hydro-biogeochemical linkages among system components and characterization of processes across interfaces (e.g., terrestrial-aquatic, coastal, urban) to address key knowledge gaps and uncertainties across a range of spatial and temporal scales. Incorporation of scientific findings into process and system models is an important aspect of the ESS strategy, both to improve predictive understanding as well as to enable the identification of new research questions and directions.

The GRRP Leading Edge cohort provides funding to owners with ambitious plans involving carbon reduction, renewable energy generation, use of building materials with lower embodied carbon, and resilience goals through achieving an advanced green certification. Development teams must be able to leverage other financing sources without extensive technical assistance from HUD. GRRP will provide up to $10 million per property or $60k per unit for construction and transaction costs associated with achieving the qualifying green certification. Owners are responsible for the balance of rehab costs.

The GRRP Elements cohort provides gap funding to properties in the midst of a recapitalization transaction that includes utility efficiency, renewable energy, carbon emission reduction, and/or climate resilience measures. Elements funds can be used to add or preserve specific green or resilient items in the property’s scope of work. GRRP will provide up to $750k per property or $40k per unit for construction and transaction costs to incorporate the selected Elements investments into the recapitalization. Owners are responsible for the balance of costs.

The DOE SC program in Biological and Environmental Research (BER) hereby announces its interest in receiving applications for Atmospheric System Research (ASR) within BER’s Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD). ASR supports research on key cloud, aerosol, precipitation, and radiative transfer processes that affect the Earth’s radiative balance and hydrological cycle, especially processes that limit the predictive ability of regional and global models. This FOA solicits research grant applications for observational, data analysis, and/or modeling studies that use observations supported by BER, including the Atmospheric
Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility, to improve understanding and model representation of: 1) Aerosol processes at ARM sites; 2) Convective cloud processes; 3) Aerosol and cloud processes from ARM’s Eastern Pacific Cloud Aerosol Precipitation Experiment (EPCAPE); and 4) Mixed-phase cloud and ice cloud processes.