Designed to recognize and address the distinct energy challenges faced by rural communities, this funding aims to increase energy affordability and promote climate resilience in areas with fewer than 10,000 people by supporting projects with a dollar amount of $500,000 to $5 million.
The J.M.K. Innovation Prize seeks to identify, support, and elevate innovators who are spearheading transformative early-stage projects in the fields of the environment, heritage conservation, and social justice. In 2023, we will award up to ten Prizes, each including a cash award of $150,000 over three years, plus $25,000 in technical assistance funds, for a total award of $175,000. Awardees also receive guidance through the Fund and its resource network, providing tools and training to support them through the challenges of a startup organization.
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 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.
IgniteX is a DOE EPIC Prize-recognized 12-week primarily virtual program designed to empower start-ups offering scalable solutions for critical human infrastructure. Program participants partner with Black & Veatch experts to co-develop, pilot, and market their new technology. Participants receive mentorship, access to our vast industry network, product testing opportunities, pitch development coaching, investor introductions, and potential funding up to $50,000.
The purpose of the Pollution Prevention Grant: Environmental Justice Through Safer/Sustainable Products is for state and tribal programs to provide pollution prevention (P2) technical assistance to businesses (e.g., information, training, expert advice) in order to improve human health and the environment in disadvantaged communities by increasing the supply, demand and use of safer and more sustainable products, such as those that are certified by EPA’s Safer Choice program, or those that conform to EPA’s Recommendations for Specifications, Standards and Ecolabels for Federal Purchasing (Recommendations).
The purpose of the Pollution Prevention Grant: Environmental Justice in Communities is for state and tribal programs to provide P2 technical assistance to businesses (e.g., information, training, expert advice) on source reduction, also known as pollution prevention (P2). Grantees must demonstrate that the project will improve human health and the environment in disadvantaged communities by implementing P2 approaches. P2 approaches can help businesses reduce the use and release of hazardous substances that can harm human health and the environment while also saving money by reducing their resource use, expenditures, waste and liability costs.
Given the pressing need for technologies that are critical for furthering several fields within FECM’s strategic vision (specifically, carbon dioxide removal, hydrogen production with carbon management, mineral sustainability, and methane mitigation), FECM has elected to fund this lab call and associated program. This solicitation offers an opportunity for private industry to partner with DOE’s National Labs to advance energy-related technologies and Lab intellectual property (IP) toward commercialization.
Through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) program, NREL offers in-depth technical partnerships that support communities in developing secure, reliable, resilient, and affordable clean energy systems. These partnerships offer teams—composed of local government, community-based organizations, and electric utilities and other key organizations that can represent the community—the chance to work alongside national laboratory staff as they apply robust modeling and analysis tools and conduct hardware-in-the-loop testing of solutions adapted to the community’s unique conditions and contexts. Two to three C2C in-depth partnerships will focus on clean energy topics. There will also be two Energyshed in-depth partnerships: one focused on a rural community and one focused on a metropolitan community.
NREL provides U.S. local governments with technical assistance to advance waste-to-energy (WTE) technologies on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO). The technical assistance addresses knowledge gaps, specific challenges, decision-making considerations, planning, and project implementation strategies related to WTE. The WTE resources considered include organic waste such as food waste, wastewater sludge, animal manure, and fats, oils, and greases.
LaunchTN is a public-private partnership with a vision to make Tennessee the most startup-friendly state in the nation. We empower Network Partners and other stakeholders by making resources accessible in order to activate sustainable economic growth in Tennessee. Our aim is to stimulate the statewide economy by facilitating capital formation, market building and nurturing Tennessee’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
LaunchTN is joining the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD) as applicants to the reauthorized State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) Program. There will be $70 million administered by LaunchTN for equity investments through InvestTN (formerly referenced as the BuildTN Fund).
The Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas (ERA) program will provide financial investment, technical assistance, and other resources to advance clean energy demonstrations and energy solutions in rural and remote areas that can be replicated and scaled. There are two topic areas: Community-Scale Demonstrations and Large-Scale Demonstrations.
