The purpose of this requisition is to initiate a Notice of Intent (NOI) for the 2023 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) titled “WASTE: Waste Analysis and Strategies for Transportation End-uses” (DE-FOA-0003072).

Description

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) intends to issue, on behalf of the Bioenergy Technologies Office and the Vehicles Technologies Office, a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled “WASTE: Waste Analysis and Strategies for Transportation End-uses”. For many communities, organic waste streams present a variety of economic, environmental, and social sustainability challenges. These waste streams include food waste, municipal wastewater sludges, animal manure, and fats, oils, and greases. There are significant costs associated with management of organic waste, including treatment, stabilization, hauling, and disposal costs or tipping fees. These waste streams also represent major sources of greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to other environmental issues including air and water quality degradation. Increasingly, State and local laws and regulations are requiring that organic waste streams be diverted from landfills, necessitating the implementation of new processing strategies and novel business models to meet these requirements. Municipal entities and local transit authorities also have significant local demand for the energy that can be derived from these waste streams. Waste-derived biogas or renewable natural gas[1] (RNG) are being used to fuel bus fleets and trash collection vehicles or produce hydrogen for hydrogen-fueled vehicles. These opportunities are often community-specific; thus this FOA is intended to provide funding to help communities and transit authorities realize these or similar synergies between waste infrastructure and sustainable transportation needs. Permissible fuels from this FOA could include renewable natural gas, partially upgraded biogas, hydrogen, biocrude, renewable diesel, renewable di-methyl-ether, or other renewable fuels. Specific eligible fuels will be identified in the final FOA. [1] Note: unless otherwise indicated, for purposes of this FOA, “renewable natural gas” is biogas that has been upgraded to pipeline standard gas and/or another pipeline-transportable, fungible standard. Recognizing that communities may be at different states in their planning efforts, this FOA seeks a phased approach to address the challenges noted above. Topic Area 1 will support Feasibility Study Development, to include such activities as feasibility studies, identification of transportation use cases and sustainability indicator baselining. For communities that are further along and may have already identified potential solutions for their waste/transportation needs, Topic Area 2 will support more detailed engineering design work to position these entities for future projects and demonstrations. It is anticipated the FOA may include the following Areas of Interest: • Topic Area 1 is aimed at helping move communities beyond a conceptualization phase by supporting in-depth feasibility analysis relating to waste-to-fuels approaches. While technical assistance programs can accomplish some of these objectives, direct financial assistance can close this capacity gap. • Topic Area 2 is targeted toward communities that have previously completed feasibility analyses and are seeking funding to further refine their project concept. Lack of municipal and non-profit staff capacity and availability of funding often puts detailed design work out of reach for many communities; Topic Area 2 is intended to close that gap for completing detailed engineering design. Topic Area 2 will also allow a limited amount of experimental work, intended to generate the data required to refine the engineering design and/or data needed for permitting or air quality analysis. The experimental work can either take place on-site or be done remotely, provided the waste streams being used are sourced from the recipient community. Model waste streams will not be permitted. The use of real waste streams (as opposed to model waste streams) will increase the likelihood of technical success by ensuring the process is sufficiently robust. EERE plans to issue the FOAs in or around December 2023 via the EERE eXCHANGE website https://eere-eXCHANGE.energy.gov/. If Applicants wish to receive official notifications and information from EERE regarding these FOAs, they should register in EERE eXCHANGE. When the FOAs are released, applications will be accepted only through EERE eXCHANGE.

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