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Energy Funding Opportunities

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    Interested in partnering with the Commerce Department around funding opportunities? Have questions? Send an email to fedquestions.commerce@state.mn.us 
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    The Minnesota Department of Commerce seeks to work with and facilitate connections with local and Tribal governments, utilities, businesses, communities and other entities interested in energy-related partnerships. The opportunities outlined below are funded by state and federal energy programs.

    Federal funding benefits Minnesotans many ways. Commerce continuously monitors federal energy funding opportunities.

    Latest news: recent & expected energy funding announcements

    How it works: The federal government often follows a structure for funding announcements: 1) Issuing a Request for Information (RFI); 2) Issuing a Notice of Intent (NOI); 3) Issuing a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) or Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). The agency offering the funding opportunity generally also holds webinars during the various stages to fully communicate details of the funding opportunity and assist in stakeholder planning.

    Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA)

    • Systems Biology Research to Advance Bioenergy Crop Production [DE-FOA-0003453] Deadlines: pre-application: Jan 17, 2025, application: March 26, 2025; DOE’s Office of Science, under the Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program, is issuing a $75 million funding opportunity announcement for systems biology research to advance bioenergy crop production.
    • Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) [RBS-24-Business-0015] Deadline: March 31, 2025; The U.S. Department of Agriculture's REAP grants can be used by agricultural producers & small businesses (including those Tribally owned or Tribal member owned) and rural small businesses for the purchase, installation, and construction of energy efficiency improvements, and replacement of energy-inefficient equipment. This program also funds the purchase and installation of renewable energy systems, such as: Biomass, Geothermal, Hydropower below 30 megawatts, Hydrogen, Small and Large Wind Generation, Small and Large Solar Generation, & Ocean generation. Funding ranges from $500,000 for an energy efficiency improvement project to $1,000,000 for a renewable energy system project. 
    • Industrial Training & Assessment Centers (ITAC) Implementation Grants [Information & Application Portal] Deadline: April 1, 2025; Informational Session: March 20, 2025, 1:00 PM CT [Register] Applications are sought for small and medium-sized manufacturing firms to receive grants of up to $300,000 per unique assessment recommendation, at a 50% cost share, made in Industrial Training & Assessment Centers assessments and/or U.S. DOE Combined Heat and Power Technical Assistance Partnership assessments – including what is now called “Onsite Energy TAP” assessments – and, once qualified, other assessments submitted previously for qualification as “ITAC-equivalent.” 
    • Accelerating CO2 Conversion Technology Development and Deployment – Biological, Catalytic and Mineralization Pathways [DE-FOA-0003495] Deadline: April 11, 2025; The DOE has announced up to $100 million for large-scale conversion of carbon emissions captured from industrial operations and power plants into environmentally responsible and economically valuable products. The funding will advance the pilot scale testing of carbon conversion technologies with high technology readiness levels capable of achieving significant carbon mitigation via biological, catalytic or mineralization pathways. 
    • State Manufacturing Leadership Program [Information & Application Portal] Deadline: April 21, 2025; This is the third round of the State Manufacturing Leadership Program, which aims to remove barriers that prevent SMMs from using innovative, data-driven tools and technologies. Awardees can obtain technical assistance from CESMII and can connect their SMMs to a diverse coalition of public and private technical assistance providers. This solicitation will support state entities, state-funded universities, and state-funded community or technical colleges to establish new or expand existing programs that assist SMMs to 1) implement smart manufacturing technologies and practices; and 2) access high-performance computing resources. 
    • Collaborations Advancing Rapid Load Additions (CARLA) [PPO-CWX-018-GDO] Deadlines, concept papers: February 28, 2025, applications: April 24, 2025; ConnectWerx, a Partnership Intermediary of the DOE Grid Deployment Office, has opened an initial funding opportunity to engage a collaborative or multiple collaboratives to develop new approaches and frameworks for system planning, cost recovery, and risk allocation for electricity demand growth, the goal is, to facilitate rapid action to accommodate significant near-term load additions while minimizing or preventing rate increases for residential and small commercial and industrial customers. A collaborative must include at least one State or public utility commission as lead/primary applicant, at least one grid operator; and at least one large load customer/developer (i.e., data center developers/operators, electrified transportation operator, and energy-intensive manufacturers).  

    Notice of Intent (NOI)

    • Distributed Wind Competitiveness Improvement Project [Read the NOI] DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory intends to release a request for proposal (RFP) under the Competitiveness Improvement Project (CIP) to support continued innovation in small- to mid-scale distributed wind energy systems in early 2025.
    • Funding to Facilitate Discovery and Development of Geothermal Resources Through Field Data Collection [Information] DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office expects to release funding in early 2025 to facilitate discovery and development of new U.S. geothermal resources through field data collection, including geophysics and exploratory drilling.
    • HARMONY: Human-Centric Analytics for Resilient & Modernized Power sYstems [DE-FOA-0003445] Prior to the end of 2024, DOE intends to issue a $5 million FOA to enhance grid reliability, resilience and accelerate pathways towards grid modernization goals.
    • Solar Module and Solar Hardware (SMASH) Incubator [DE-FOA-0003460] DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy intends to issue a $20 million NOFO entitled 'Fiscal Year 2025 Solar Module and Solar Hardware (SMASH) Incubator' to address the lack of sufficient private investment that is available to successfully commercialize research, development and demonstration activities to bring innovative solar photovoltaic technology to market.
    • Regional Direct Air Capture Hubs – Recurring Program [DE-FOA-0003429] The DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations intends to issue a NOFO for up to $1.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024. The goal of this NOFO, along with potential subsequent re-openings and related solicitations, is to support the commercialization of direct air capture (DAC) solutions and the development of four regional DAC hubs.
    • Preventing Outages and Enhancing the Resilience of the Electric Grid Formula Grants to States and Indian tribes [DE-FOA-0003486] DOE’s Grid Deployment Office has published fiscal year 2025 grant allocation amounts and released a Notice of Intent to open FY Grid Resilience State and Tribal Formula Grants application and allocation request period in February 2025. The application period will open with DOE issuing an amended Administrative and Legal Requirements Document providing instructions for FY25 grant allocation requests.

    Request for Proposals (RFP)

    • Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas - IIJA [DE-FOA-0003428] DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations intends to issue a Notice of Funding Opportunity entitled “Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas FY24.” Topic Areas include: Open Category, Dual Use and Co-location, Smaller-scale Community Centered Projects, Isolated Microgrids and Unelectrified Buildings and the NOFO is anticipated to be released in September 2024.
    • Municipal Investment Fund [Request for Proposals] Deadline: March 3, 2025; Local Governments for Sustainability USA are offering market-building funding and technical support to help cities, towns, counties and Tribal Nations and their partner not-for-profit organizations to develop and finance clean energy projects and pursue CGC’s Municipal Investment Fund and CGC’s Open Solicitation, targeting projects that can accelerate clean power projects, create jobs, lower energy costs and improve the quality of life. This opportunity provides technical assistance and up to $500,000 in funding for up to 100 communities.
    Request for Information (RFI)
    • Defining Sustainable Maritime Fuels in the United States [DOE has released this RFI] Deadline: Feb 28, 2025; DOE released this RFI to establish a consistent and reliable definition for sustainable maritime fuel (SMF) that informs and aligns community, industry, governments and other maritime stakeholders. The RFI also seeks specific feedback on other topics that could affect what qualifies as a SMF including minimum carbon intensity reductions, sustainability factors, criteria air pollutant inclusion, acceptable feedstocks, global requirements and emission reduction technologies.
    • US Department of Treasury’s Clean Energy Storytelling Program [Information] The Department of Treasury has created the Clean Energy Storytelling Program to invite individuals, workers, businesses, tax-exempt organizations and other eligible taxpayers to voluntarily share their stories about how the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) clean energy tax incentives are lowering energy costs for families, bringing back and strengthening manufacturing and creating good-paying jobs across the country.

    Find out more!

    The Commerce Department issues a bi-monthly e-newsletter on state and federal funding announcements and programs, as well as other items of interest. You can reference the most recently issued e-newsletters, in their entirety, below, to keep up to date with information on New State funded energy programs. Information on other federal funding (tax credits, loans, prizes or competitions, student scholarships or fellowships, etc.) Various types of grant-seeking support (webinars, meetings and conferences, technical assistance opportunities, mapping tools, reports and other publications, etc.). To receive this e-newsletter directly, sign up by clicking the “”sign up for email updates” button at the top right of this page.

    Resources

    Get ready to apply for federal funding opportunities

    As of April 4, 2022, entities doing business with the federal government (including grant applicants responding to a federal funding opportunities) are required to be registered in the System for Award Management found at SAM.gov and to have a Unique Entity Identification (UEI). UEI's are created by registering in SAM.gov. Registration in SAM.Gov is free.

    Entities that were registered in SAM.gov, with either active or in-active registrations, prior to April 4, 2022 have had a UEI assigned to their file. This transition to using a UEI rather than a DUNS number allows the federal government to streamline the entity identification and validation process, making it easier and less burdensome for entities to do business with the federal government.

    For additional information, read the Quick Start Guide for registering an entity in SAM.gov. Note: display issues have been noted when trying to access the documents linked above via the Chrome browser. If the guidance articles do not show by clicking on them above, copy the link address and paste it into a different browser such as Firefox.

    Resources for Tribal Nations

    Grant seeking and fundraising resources

    Community Benefits Plan Resources

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