The American-Made Promoting Registration of Inverters and Modules with Ecolabel (PRIME) Prize is a two-phase, $2.7 million competition aimed at increasing EPEAT registration of solar PV modules and inverters. The goal is to help manufacturers meet the high bar for EPEAT product standards and make their products more attractive to purchasers with sustainability goals. The prize incentivizes the registration of PV module and inverter products through the EPEAT ecolabel. EPEAT is an ecolabel operated and maintained by the Global Electronics Council (GEC) for certain electronic products, including solar PV modules and inverters.

The Energy and Food Sovereignty Nexus Prize encourages Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) to develop student-led demonstration projects that increase their knowledge on clean energy and food sovereignty on TCU campuses. Projects may include but are not limited to:

• Greenhouses heated or cooled by geothermal (ground-source) energy
• Greenhouses powered by wind or solar
• Solar arrays that provide shade for crops to grow or livestock to graze.

TCUs are encouraged to incorporate local traditional crops and/or livestock into their designs, as well as relevant clean energy systems to ensure food is sustainably grown for their environments. Students’ valuable exposure and hands-on experience in energy and food sovereignty can then be shared to benefit Tribes.

The American-Made Community Power Accelerator Prize is a $10 million prize competition designed to fast-track the efforts of new, emerging, and expanding solar developers and codevelopers to grow multiple successful community-benefiting distributed solar projects. Round 3 of the prize seeks organizations that have the desire and ambition to develop and finance a portfolio of two or more projects that, in aggregate, total at least 1 MW AC of distributed solar generation. To be eligible, no single portfolio project may exceed 5 MW AC. Distributed solar projects may include but are not limited to:

• Community solar
• Behind-the-meter virtual power plants (VPPs)
• Distributed energy resource (DER) aggregations
• Microgrids
• Commercial and industrial (C&I) solar
• Multifamily projects.

The goal of the Technical Assistance (TA) program is to assist transmission planners in incorporating energy equity as an objective in their planning. The TA will be targeted to transmission planners including Regional Transmission Operators (RTOs), Independent System Operators (ISOs), Power Market Administrators (PMAs), and utilities. The ITP TA will be delivered through a two-tiered approach—Tier I: Capacity Building and Tier II: Advanced Capacity Building. In Tier I, participants will learn how to better integrate energy equity in transmission planning through consultation, presentations, workshops and webinars, and other relevant resources. Tier II is designed to offer an advanced technical assistance program on energy equity in transmission planning through deep-dive analysis, modeling, and analytical support (e.g., framework development, proof of concept, etc.).

DOE’s Grid Deployment Office (GDO) released an up to $325 million Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the Programa de Comunidades Resilientes, an initiative to improve community-level energy resilience for vulnerable and disadvantaged populations across Puerto Rico. Specifically, this program seeks to provide funding for solar and battery storage installations across two types of vital infrastructure: community healthcare facilities, as well as community centers and other common areas in public housing and privately owned subsidized multi-family properties.

NSF-supported science and engineering research increasingly relies on cutting-edge infrastructure. With its Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program and Major Multi-user Facilities (“Major Facilities”) projects, NSF supports infrastructure projects at the lower and higher range of infrastructure project costs, Foundation-wide, across science and engineering research disciplines. The Foundation-wide Mid-scale Research Infrastructure opportunity is intended to provide NSF with an agile, Foundation-wide process to fund experimental research capabilities in the mid-scale range between MRI and Major Multi-user Facilities.

This solicitation will fund up to $10.6 million of projects that address several major areas of need for floating offshore wind, including innovation in ports and vessels, transmission technology, and uncrewed underwater vehicles for environmental monitoring. NOWRDC intends to support projects in partnership with the best research and innovation organizations to achieve maximum impact. Proposals are welcomed from all geographic locations within the United States, with additional eligibility parameters outlined in the Request for Proposals (RFP).

The Science and Technology Centers (STC): Integrative Partnerships program supports exceptionally innovative, complex research and education projects that require large-scale, long-term awards. STCs focus on creating new scientific paradigms, establishing entirely new scientific disciplines, and developing transformative technologies which have the potential for broad scientific or societal impact. STCs conduct world-class research through partnerships among institutions of higher education, national laboratories, industrial organizations, other public or private entities, and via international collaborations, as appropriate. They provide a means to undertake potentially groundbreaking investigations at the interfaces of disciplines and/or highly innovative approaches within disciplines. STCs may involve any area of science and engineering that NSF supports. STC investments support the NSF vision of creating and exploiting new concepts in science and engineering and providing global leadership in research and education. Centers provide a rich environment for encouraging scientists, engineers, and educators to take risks in pursuing discoveries and new knowledge.

SELF’s mission is to rebuild and empower underserved communities by providing access to affordable and innovative financing for sustainable property improvements, with the primary focus on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and climate resilience in low- and moderate-income (LMI) neighborhoods. We strive to create positive social, economic, and environmental impacts by helping people improve the health, safety, and quality of life in their homes while reducing operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) Low Carbon Pathways for Multifamily Buildings program offers financial support to New York State Multifamily building owners & property managers to install low carbon energy efficiency upgrades.

Through the program, affordable and market-rate multifamily building owners/property managers can take a step-by-step approach towards achieving whole-building deep carbon reductions and electrification by implementing packages of low carbon upgrades that can more easily leverage existing capital improvement milestones (e.g. equipment end of life, local law compliance, etc.) to reduce the incremental cost of improvements.  In addition to energy and utility bill savings, these low carbon measure packages may lead to reduced operation and maintenance costs, extended equipment life, and increased occupant comfort.

The Large-Scale Thermal program provides cost-share for design of large single building and multiple building projects, including thermal energy networks, that serve as replicable examples for significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from heating, cooling, and hot water, using approaches that are clean and resilient, minimize energy consumption, maximize energy recovery, and offer an equitable approach to building decarbonization. A large-scale thermal system uses heat pumps to move thermal energy from sources, such as the ground, surface water, wastewater, and waste heat, to provide heating and hot water to one or more buildings and to move thermal energy to sinks, such as the ground, and surface water, to provide cooling to one or more buildings.