WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to over $96 million in funding for bioenergy research and development. This funding supports the U.S. bioeconomy, as well as DOE’s goal of providing consumers and businesses with a range of domestic energy options that are affordable, reliable, and secure.

Topic areas within this FOA will advance DOE’s Bioenergy Technology Office’s objectives of reducing the price of drop-in biofuels, lowering the cost of biopower, and enabling high-value products from biomass or waste resources. Topic areas include:

• Scale-Up of Bench Applications (up to $28M): Reducing scale-up risk of biofuel and bioproduct processes.
• Waste to Energy Strategies for a Bioeconomy (up to $18M): Addressing ways to use materials that are currently “waste” to make energy and new products, including strategies for municipal solid waste; wet wastes, like food and manures; and municipal waste water treatment.
• Algae Bioproducts and CO₂ Direct-Air-Capture and Efficiency (up to $14M): Lowering the cost of algal biofuels by improving carbon efficiency, and/or by employing direct air capture technologies.
• Bio-Restore: Biomass to Restore Natural Resources (up to $8M): Quantifying the economic and environmental benefits associated with growing energy crops, with a focus on restoring water quality and soil health.
• Efficient Wood Heaters (up to $5M): Developing and testing low-emission, high efficiency residential wood heaters.
• Biopower and Products from Urban and Suburban Wastes: North American Multi-University Partnership for Research and Education (up to $15M): Developing innovative technologies to manage major forms of urban and suburban waste, with a focus on using plastic waste to make recycled products and using wastes to produce low-cost biopower.
• Scalable CO₂ Electrocatalysis (up to $8M): Developing low temperature and low pressure CO₂ electrocatalysis technologies for generating chemical building blocks.

The application process will include two phases: a concept paper and a full application. Concept papers are due on March 5, 2020 and full applications are due on April 30, 2020.

For more information about this round of bioenergy research and development funding, read the full FOA on EERE Exchange.