The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) announced up to $127.5 million in federal funding to support the development of carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture, removal, and conversion test centers for cement manufacturing facilities and power plants.  This effort supports the establishment of test centers to cost-effectively research and evaluate carbon capture, removal, and conversion technologies in an industrial/utility environment.

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.

The Ocean Exchange Collegiate Award, and the Guy Harvey Foundation Collegiate Award 2024, of $10,000 USD each, are given to the solutions that advance our understanding of the ocean and help minimize our impact on these resources, even while using them for human benefit, resulting in more resilient bodies of water including healthy marine life and coastlines.

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.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $43 million in funding for projects that will advance research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D) in several areas critical to the future of advanced batteries. The funding will drive innovations in low-cost electric vehicle (EV) battery electrode, cell, or pack manufacturing; improve battery safety and reduce cascading failures; and strengthen the domestic supply chain of inexpensive and abundant battery materials. This funding is aligned with strategies detailed in the U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization, which is a landmark interagency framework of strategies and actions to remove all emissions from the transportation sector by 2050, by advancing battery technologies that can power safe and efficient zero-emission EVs.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) announced the Offshore Wind National and Regional Research and Development Funding Opportunity, which will award $48.6 million for projects that address several major areas of need for offshore wind. The areas include accelerating research and development of floating offshore wind platforms; exploring innovations for fixed-bottom foundations; improving offshore wildlife protection through new monitoring technologies; expanding the reach of the domestic supply chain; advancing U.S. academic leadership in floating offshore wind; and investigating solutions to protect future infrastructure from lightning.

The Design Challenge is an annual collegiate competition where interdisciplinary teams create sustainable, high-performance building designs that address real-world issues such as existing building retrofits, community impacts, affordability, and resilience. Teams collaborate on a residential or commercial design project for one or two academic semesters, with the competition culminating each April at the Solar Decathlon Competition Event.

Technology commercialization is notoriously challenging in the building sector. Building tech investments often require long horizons that our planet does not have time for. Additionally, many new projects and businesses fall victim to ‘Valleys of Death’ during their early development stages. IMPEL equips early-stage innovators with technical and communication tools, so they can translate the premise and promise of new building technologies into the language of business. 

Uniquely embedded at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s Building Technologies Division, and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office, IMPEL connects its Innovators to public and private sector pipelines, and a diverse network of investors, demonstration and technical experts, industry leaders, and policymakers to help our innovators reach their next milestone.

Despite advances in energy storage technologies, and ever-increasing numbers of deployments, several technological optimization opportunities still exist including initial pilots and demonstrations, hardware cost reductions, enhanced system performance, and demonstration of effective integration with the power grid. Improving and optimizing these areas will accelerate growth of long duration electrical energy storage deployments. As New York State’s electrification of transportation and buildings applications increases, long duration electrical energy storage solutions will become critical in meeting times of reduced renewable generation.

NYSERDA seeks to stimulate and grow long duration energy storage solutions in electrical, mechanical, chemical, and thermal-electric energy storage innovation portfolios in New York State by making up to $5.35 million in funds available. This funding is to support innovative and under-utilized long duration energy storage solutions, devices, software, controls, and other complementary technologies that decrease energy storage total hardware and installation costs, improve performance, and demonstrate integration with the power grid. Submissions must demonstrate significant statewide public benefits and quantify all energy, environmental, and/or economic impacts.

The NYSERDA Clean Hydrogen Innovation program focuses on accelerating innovative solutions in clean hydrogen to decarbonize hard-to-electrify sectors and to support the transition to a resilient, zero-emission electric grid. Through this program, NYSERDA has up to $11.5 million in co-funding for clean hydrogen research, development, and demonstration projects. Funding in this solicitation focuses on Clean Hydrogen Innovation in the following technical challenge areas:

1. Challenge 1. Hydrogen applications to decarbonize industrial process heat
2. Challenge 2. Mitigation of nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from hydrogen combustion
3. Challenge 3. Hydrogen storage technologies for bulk storage and limited footprint areas
4. Challenge 4. Hydrogen-based generation systems for microgrids and grid support services
5. Challenge 5. Hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles.

NYSERDA is issuing Round 2 of funding for two Challenge Areas:

1. Innovations in Green Cooling: Research, development, and demonstration of tools, technologies and strategies that increase adoption, performance, and benefits of nature-based approaches to passive cooling, resilience, and reliability in extreme heat.
2. Carbon Negative Buildings: Demonstration, introduction and scale up of carbon negative products in New York State that support building energy efficiency.