Climate Resilience Centers

Description

Program Objective Understanding fine-scale, local and community impacts of climate change across this nation is a critical gap in climate research and analysis today. Further, climate change is known to disproportionately impact people in disadvantaged communities due to increased exposure and vulnerability. BER seeks to establish CRCs at HBCUs, non-R1 MSIs, and emerging research institutions to address critical research questions in support of the needs of stakeholders and communities in the pursuit of equitable climate solutions. The CRCs will facilitate two-way engagement between BER sponsored research and regional communities, enhancing accessibility and translation of DOE research to inform and build climate resilience. Efforts focused at local levels are expected to identify data sets, technical and process information, tailored models, and community contexts that will aid in the new investigations as well as bring critically needed community and local perspectives more centrally within DOE’s climate research planning. CRCs will build upon and enhance the talent and capabilities at local institutions, providing a valuable resource to advance climate research, identify local resilience challenges, and develop equitable solutions. These centers have the potential to catalyze additional research activities in climate and energy, the development of future technology innovations, and new jobs in communities across the country. Background Climate resilience is the ability of a community or region to reach full recovery after being exposed to climate-induced stresses and damages, using strategies that adjust its adaptive capacity at minimal impact to natural, socioeconomic, infrastructure, and financial systems. A key component of climate resilience involves prediction of climate change induced stresses and damages to systems with the use of high-fidelity models. To offset potential stresses and damages in advance of their occurrence, scientists and stakeholders need to choose from a wide range of potential strategies that offer the best possible outcomes. Thus, the resilience challenge will be to inform the process of choosing appropriate equitable solutions that can prepare for climate-induced risks. Making effective, science-informed decisions will rely on the accuracy of predictions, evaluation of equitable strategies, and assessing the pace at which resources will be available to communities. Furthermore, improving climate resilience over mid- to long-term time horizons needs to include investigations and predictions that can inform future technologies and approaches, where local institutions can identify research priorities and participate in economic development. These predictions, for example, may include projecting when, where, and how the increasing pressures caused by sea level rise will affect coastal systems, how elevated heat stress will increasingly influence the security of energy systems, or the frequency and impact of wildfires or hurricanes on ecosystems and communities. Together, these all combine to measure the time-dependent stressors, influences, and adaptive capacities in a changing climate and how to increase resilience against climate-induced risks. CRCs will provide an embedded, community focused foundation to serve as both a resource and mechanism for advancing climate science and promoting climate resilience. The CRCs will develop a research agenda that aligns with the BER mission, priorities, and foundational capabilities, advancing new fine-scale research while engaging communities and stakeholders in ways that will improve the research and increase its accessibility and utility for subsequent use in community decision-making and action. Such engagements will also provide use-inspired feedback that can help inform future BER research opportunities and directions. The centers will conduct place-based climate change analyses to evaluate the potential societal and/or environmental impacts of current and future climate risks and the implications of potential future responses. In addition, each center will emphasize a set of local challenges to be addressed through a multidisciplinary effort that leverages DOE resources in modeling, data, observations, and/or analysis. Examples of science challenges that the CRCs may address include: · Developing contextualized, community-based definitions and models of resilience, illuminating the dynamic processes, quantifiable dimensions, and metrics that can be incorporated to measure progress. · Developing new and insightful prediction tools and exploring their use through stress testing to evaluate adaptation strategies that can achieve desired levels of equitable resilience over time horizons of interest. · Building or extending observational capabilities to provide the necessary data for new predictions or improve prediction accuracy in support of resilience strategies. Importantly, the centers will emphasize science translation, linking climate resilience science with the local climate resilience needs to accelerate the deployment of equitable solutions through participatory engagement. To ensure that CRCs can take advantage of the most up-to-date scientific information to achieve their goals, each center will be required to leverage the scientific products and/or capabilities at the DOE national laboratories, potentially through direct collaborations with BER-supported research at the laboratories, leveraging of research products, or utilizing available instrumentation and resources at the national laboratories and user facilities. To achieve these goals, CRCs may develop investments in research infrastructure needed to advance institutional research capacity. For example, a high-performance computing capability in support of modeling efforts, or new or expanded observation or analytical capabilities for collection of environmental information. Other important aspects of the centers are to foster next-generation, multidisciplinary climate scientists and to advance awareness and proficiencies in stakeholder engagement. Education, training, outreach, and public engagement will accelerate the innovations, translations, and subsequent applications of BER-sponsored science, as well as empower the science and stakeholder communities to identify future research and resilience challenges.

Eligibility

Grants.gov lists this opportunity under eligibility category code 25. These codes correspond to applicant types (state/local government, tribal organization, nonprofit, educational institution, individual, small business, etc.) defined in Grants.gov's own eligibility reference. See the current Grants.gov eligibility categories or check the official listing below for this opportunity's exact eligibility statement.

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