The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) launched the $500 million Renew America’s Schools Program to promote the implementation of energy improvements at K-12 public schools across the country. This is a first-of-its-kind investment made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The program supports the implementation of infrastructure improvements in schools, with a focus on local educational agencies (LEAs) that qualify as rural and/or high poverty.

The 2025 Renew America’s Schools Prize consists of three phases. During Phase 1, competitors will build teams and curate lists of at least 10 schools and school facilities that demonstrate compelling need and eligibility for investment. Up to 14 Phase 1 Winners will earn a cash prize of $300,000 for successfully building teams and submitting compelling applications identifying need. DOE will down select to identify winners who may move on to Phases 2 and 3, wherein they will enter and execute Cooperative Agreements with DOE.

The purpose of the Community Wildfire Defense Grant is to assist at-risk local communities and Indian Tribes with planning and mitigating against the risk created by wildfire.

The Act prioritizes at-risk communities in an area identified as having high or very high wildfire hazard potential, are low-income, and/or have been impacted by a severe disaster. More details on these three priorities can be found in the Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs).

The CWDG helps communities in the wildland urban interface (WUI) implement the three goals of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy (Cohesive Strategy):

• Restore and Maintain Landscapes: Landscapes, regardless of jurisdictional boundaries, are resilient to fire, insect, disease, invasive species, and climate change disturbances, in accordance with management objectives.
• Create Fire Adapted Communities: Human populations and infrastructure are as prepared as possible to receive, respond to, and recover from wildland fire.
• Improve Wildfire Response: All jurisdictions participate in making and implementing safe, effective, efficient risk-based wildfire management decisions.

The purpose of this solicitation is to award grants to fund projects focused on geothermal energy and lithium recovery from geothermal brine that support local jurisdictions and private entities to advance the geothermal sector and related activities per Public Resource Code (PRC) Sections 3800-3827 and California Code of Regulations (CCR) Sections 1660-1665. Under no circumstances will loans be issued under this solicitation.

TRIBAL CLEAN ENERGY PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT – 2025 Under this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), the DOE Office of Indian Energy is soliciting applications from Indian Tribes, which include Alaska Native Regional Corporations and Village Corporations, Intertribal Organizations, and Tribal Energy Development Organizations to: (1) Conduct clean energy planning (Topic Area 1); (2) Comprehensively assess the feasibility and viability of deploying clean energy technology (Topic Area 2); or, (3) Conduct clean energy design and development activities (Topic Area 3). Unless DOE approves a requested cost share reduction from 10% to 0%, all Applicants are required to provide non-federal cost share of at least 10% of the total allowable costs of the project (i.e., the sum of the federal share and the non-federal Recipient cost share of allowable costs equals the total allowable cost of the project). If requested by the Applicant as part of its application, a cost share reduction from 10% to 0% may be considered based on financial need, specifically (1) poverty rate, or (2) median household income of the tribal community as a percentage of statewide median household income. (see Section III.B.2. of the FOA and ‘Application Forms and Templates’ for this FOA on IE-Exchange). DOE expects to make approximately $25 million of federal funding available for new awards under this FOA. The actual level of funding, if any, depends on Congressional appropriations. DOE anticipates making approximately 20 to 40 awards under this FOA. DOE may issue awards in one, multiple, or none of the Topic Areas. See the FOA document in IE-Exchange for a full description.

The Secretary of the Interior (“Secretary”), through the Division of Energy and Mineral Development (DEMD), Office of Trust Services, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), is soliciting grant proposals from Federally recognized tribal entities to build Tribal capacity for energy resource regulation and management. 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; and development of Tribal energy regulations.

The objective of this NOFO is to enhance grid reliability and resilience in the face of growing uncertainties and in the age of digital information systems and networks. It is critical to quantify and clearly communicate risk and uncertainties to decision-makers and human operators. This NOFO would seek applications to conduct Research and Development and Demonstration (RD&D) activities that advance the state of the art for power system uncertainty and risk metrics to help human operators receive actionable information to better understand, predict, prevent, and mitigate cascading failures in power grids. This is a newly developing field for the power sector with few, if any, commercial tools. It is therefore assumed this topic area will require an academic or research institution to be heavily involved in the project to achieve program objectives. Therefore, DOE is restricting eligibility to universities, colleges, DOE FFRDCs and non-profit research institutions or think-tanks to serve as the prime applicant. Prime applicants are encouraged to apply in partnerships with electric sector partners and technology providers to ensure the research remains relevant to industry.

This NOFO serves as the next action in a series of actions taken by DOE to expand deployment of HVDC transmission technology in the U.S., by investing in standards development and innovative solutions to reduce cost and footprint of HV DCCB technology for widespread use in the U.S. Topic Area 1 aims to expand on the standards development being conducted through DOE FOA 2828‘s Topic Area 1 by developing technical specifications and operational requirements for HVDC power circuit breakers to the suite of available standards. Topic Area 2 aims to explore potential innovative concepts and designs that can reduce the cost to produce, install, and operate HV DCCB, as well as reduce the footprint of the equipment and improve performance, given that power plant and/or platform space is at a premium, especially for offshore wind applications. The goal is to build off the work conducted, and lessons learned under the DOE ARPA-E BREAKERS program focused on the development of novel technologies for medium voltage direct current power circuit breakers.

The DOE SC programs in Nuclear Physics (NP) and Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) hereby announce their interest in receiving applications to the Nuclear Data InterAgency Working Group Research Program for research projects intended to answer nuclear data questions of interest to the research communities supported by those programs. This topic focuses on acquiring and refining nuclear data essential for fusion applications, particularly neutron interaction cross-sections, decay pathways, and activation products. It emphasizes the need for comprehensive sensitivity studies to prioritize nuclear data gaps that significantly impact reactor design, economics, and safety. Additionally, improving nuclear analysis and radiation transport models to optimize material selection and reduce waste is
crucial. Research should aim to improve predictive models for material activation and provide detailed uncertainty quantification to support better design choices and waste management strategies in fusion energy systems.

The Wind Turbine Technology Recycling NOFO is a $20M program intended to address various barriers to widespread adoption of recycling for two major materials found in wind energy systems, fiber reinforced composites and rare earth elements. The overall goals are as follows:

• Accelerate development of designs that are more easily recyclable and reusable
• Accelerate development of end-of-life processing technologies to cost effectively, sustainably, and efficiently recycle and recover materials from wind turbines, including manufacturing waste
• Address technological and supply chain challenges limiting recycling of fiber reinforced composites and rare earth element magnets in wind turbines

Transmission Acceleration Grants (TAG) will support State and Tribal efforts to accelerate and improve transmission siting and permitting and strengthen transmission planning for critical transmission lines (100 kV or greater) in any area of the country. Eligible participants are State or Tribal entities, or entities working with them such as regional transmission planning organizations, regional-state committees, or not-for-profit organizations. The TAG Program is making $10 million in funding available at this time.

The FY25 CLIMR Lab Call allocates part of the DOE’s Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF), whose mission is to support technologies with commercial potential that originate at DOE national laboratories by attracting partners who will develop products and sell them into viable markets. This process fills a key need for many labs as they assess their own portfolios, identify the highest-quality prospective partners, and assist those industry partners in evaluating technologies for their business models. While only DOE national laboratories are eligible for funding from this lab call, every funded project must include at least one private sector partner. Incubators, accelerators, manufacturers, and trade associations are among the range of partner types encouraged to partner with national labs through the CLIMR lab call, as they are well positioned to help energy-related national lab-developed technology advance toward commercialization.

The SBIR/STTR Programs Office works collaboratively with 13 program offices throughout the DOE. Each DOE program office considers its high priority research needs and program mission, as well as the Department’s goals for the program in developing research topics.  The specific research topics selected for the SBIR and STTR programs are developed by DOE technical program managers. DOE offers more than sixty technical topics and 250 subtopics, spanning research areas that support the DOE mission in Energy Production, Energy Use, Fundamental Energy Sciences, Environmental Management, and Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation.