The Distressed Area Recompete Pilot Program (Recompete Pilot Program) will invest $200 million in persistently distressed communities to create and connect people to good jobs. This program will create renewed economic opportunity in communities that have for too long been forgotten. To do so, the program targets areas where prime-age (25-54 years) employment significantly trails the national average, with the goal to close this gap through large, flexible investments. As part of EDA’s place-based economic development approach, the Recompete Pilot Program aims to meet communities where they are by offering grant opportunities that ensure sustainable and equitable economic growth across the United States.

The Pilot Program for TOD Planning helps support FTA’s mission of improving public transportation for America’s communities by providing funding to local communities to integrate land use and transportation planning around a new fixed guideway or core capacity improvement project. Per statute, any comprehensive or site specific planning funded through the program must examine ways to improve economic development and ridership, foster multimodal connectivity and accessibility, improve transit access for pedestrian and bicycle traffic, engage the private sector, identify infrastructure needs, and enable mixed-use development near transit stations.

The objective of this NOFO is to invite states, Indian Tribes, irrigation districts, water districts, local governmental entities, non-profit organizations, Existing Watershed Groups, and local and special districts (e.g., irrigation and water districts, conservation districts, natural resource districts) to submit proposals for Phase I activities to develop a watershed group, complete watershed restoration planning activities, and design watershed management projects.

Through Planning and Project Design Grants, Reclamation provides funding for collaborative planning and design projects to support water management improvements. This includes funding for: (1) Water Strategy Grants to conduct planning activities to improve water supplies (e.g., water supplies to disadvantaged communities that do not have reliable access to water, water marketing, water conservation, drought resilience, and ecological resilience); (2) Project
Design Grants to conduct project-specific design for projects to improve water management; and (3) comprehensive Drought Contingency Plans.

This NOFO’s objective is to invite eligible applicants to submit proposals for projects that can increase water management flexibility—making our water supply more resilient. This helps to prepare for and address the impacts of drought and water supply shortages. Projects that may be funded under this NOFO are divided into four task areas (Task A, B, C, or D).

o Task A: Increasing the Reliability of Water Supplies through Infrastructure
Improvements.
o Task B: Increasing the Reliability of Water Supplies Through Groundwater
Recovery.
o Task C: Projects to Improve Water Management through Decision Support Tools,
Modeling, and Measurement.

o Task D: Construction of domestic water supply projects for Tribes or disadvantaged communities that do not have reliable access to water supplies

On July 21, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a new solicitation to connect industry partners with the high performance computing (HPC) resources and expertise at DOE’s National Laboratories to improve material performance and advance manufacturing processes for an equitable clean energy future. Through the HPC4EI initiative, selected teams will harness the raw processing power of our National Labs’ supercomputers to apply advanced modeling, simulation, and data analysis to manufacturing and materials projects.

The NSF Directorate for Engineering (ENG) seeks to build engineering research capacity across the nation by investing in new academic investigators who have yet to receive research funding from Federal Agencies.  The Engineering Research Initiation (ERI) program will support new investigators as they initiate their research programs and advance in their careers as researchers, educators, and innovators.  This funding opportunity aims to broaden the base of investigators involved in engineering research and therefore is limited to investigators that are not affiliated with “very high research activity” R1 institutions (according to the Carnegie Classification https://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/).

Organizations can apply for a Capital Project Grant, a Program grant, or they can apply for both. The total request in all circumstances cannot exceed $2,500,000.

1. Capital Project Grants
   Projects could include but are not limited to: new construction, remodeling existing structures, purchasing land, purchasing equipment, purchasing and installing energy efficient heating and/or cooling equipment, installing renewable energy systems, weatherizing facility, replacing roof and windows, installing/updating recreation fields.

   2. Program Grants
   Project examples could include but are not limited to mentoring, STEM education, environmental justice activities, renewable energy information, disaster preparedness, outdoor education, before or after-school education, volunteer programs, youth volunteer efforts, career or workforce training, programming for women, recreational or athletic activities, senior activities, veteran support activities, food access, and wraparound services (health services, behavioral services, licensed childcare).

To reduce harmful pollutants from millions of wood heaters, Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), funded by the DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), will oversee a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) Call to accelerate wood heater innovation and develop the next generation of efficient and clean wood heaters. Applicant innovators, researchers and manufacturers will work collaboratively with and leverage the unique expertise of BNL or LBNL to develop and validate the performance of their innovative wood heater technology. Applicants are expected to collaborate with BNL or LBNL to develop a scope of work and appropriate budget for advancing their wood heater technology.

This opportunity will fund competitively selected CRADAs between BNL or LBNL and applicant innovators, researchers and manufacturers. All DOE-BETO funding will go directly to the National Laboratories to execute the scope of work for a 12 to 18 month project, with the partnering applicants committing a minimum of 20% cost share to the project.

This Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund (PR-ERF) FOA provides up to $450 million to support residential solar PV and battery storage installations and offer consumer protection and education resources. Potential applicants may include private industry, educational institutions, state and local governmental entities, non-profit organizations, and energy cooperatives. Through this deployment-focused funding, DOE aims to incentivize the installation of roughly 30,000–40,000 residential solar and battery systems. Qualified beneficiaries of the systems installed by selected partners will include very low-income, single-family households that are either located in areas that have a high percentage of very low-income households and experience frequent and prolonged power outages or contain a family member with an energy-dependent disability, such as individuals who need electric wheelchairs for mobility or those that use at-home dialysis machines.

The Mission of the Southeast New England Program Opportunity to Advance Resilience (SOAR) Fund is to improve and support the resilience of disadvantaged communities throughout the SNEP region with meaningful community involvement as it relates to the design and implementation of projects to address the anticipated effects of climate change and the historic, longterm impacts of environmental and social injustices. Through this initiative, SNEP plans to fund a host of planning, implementation, outreach, training, capacity, and staff-building projects that correspond with the goals, objectives and priorities outlined in SNEP’s Five-Year Strategic Plan.

Through this opportunity, WPTO aims to identify promising, potentially high-impact research ideas from minority-serving colleges and universities, especially new entrants or those who have not recently worked with the WPTO. Eligible researchers could have a wide range of expertise, including water power-related engineering and other technology-specific  expertise , but also expertise in social science,  biological and environmental sciences, local governance processes, energy system integration, community-scale power systems, and other related areas. Researchers whose work has robust and deep ties to their communities and will be able to leverage those ties in their projects are particularly encouraged to apply.