OARS funding Environmental Sustainability

In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a set of "Big Ideas," 10 bold, long-term research and process ideas that identify areas for future investment at the frontiers of science and engineering. The Big Ideas represent unique opportunities to position our Nation at the cutting edge of global science and engineering leadership by bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives to support convergence research. As such, when responding to this solicitation, even though proposals must be submitted to the Directorate for Geosciences, once received, the proposals will be managed by a cross-Directorate team of NSF Program Directors. Arctic temperatures are warming faster than nearly everywhere else on Earth, with some models predicting that continued warming could produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by mid-century. The rapid and wide-scale changes occurring in response to this warming portend new opportunities and unprecedented risks to natural systems; social and cultural systems; economic, political and legal systems; and built environments of the Arctic and across the globe. Gaps in scientific observations and the prevalence of interdependent social, natural, and built systems in the Arctic make it challenging to predict the region's future. Understanding and adapting to a changing Arctic will require creative new directions for Arctic-related research, education, workforce development, and leveraging of science, engineering, and technology advances from outside the Arctic. Navigating the New Arctic (NNA), one of NSF's 10 Big Ideas, embodies the Foundation's forward-looking response to these profound challenges and opportunities.

The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to seek broad stakeholder input to inform the strategic direction of the DOE Lighting Research & Development (R&D) portfolio. The purpose of issuing this RFI is to better understand how lighting research goals can be refined to reflect evolving technology needs and to inform related R&D technologies. Specifically, the DOE EERE program is interested in gathering information relevant to four (4) different topic areas: (1) Identify impactful lighting R&D opportunities who immediate applications are beyond general illumination, but have potential to help save energy in the built environment; (2) Identify impactful lighting R&D opportunities within general illumination that are absent (or under-represented) in the 2018 DOE Solid-State Lighting (SSL) R&D Opportunities (RDO) document; (3) Validate the importance of existing R&D opportunities described in the RDO and provide additional context or support, and (4) Provide other comments or information that could improve the quality of the RDO or the general direction of the DOE Lighting R&D Program.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement encourages applications using community-engaged research methods to investigate the potential health risks of environmental exposures of concern to the community and to implement an environmental public health action plan based on research findings. The overall goal is to inform changes and to support efforts to prevent or reduce exposure to harmful environmental exposures and improve the health of a community.

The DOE SC program in Biological and Environmental Research (BER) hereby announces its interest in receiving applications for research in Environmental Systems Science (ESS), including Terrestrial Ecosystem Science (TES) and Subsurface Biogeochemical Research (SBR). The goal of the Environmental System Science (ESS) activity in BER is to advance a robust, predictive understanding of the set of interdependent physical, biogeochemical, ecological, hydrological, and geomorphological processes for use in Earth system, ecosystem and reactive transport models. Using an iterative approach to model-driven experimentation and observation, and interdisciplinary teams, ESS-supported scientists work to unravel the coupled physical, chemical and biological processes that control the structure and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems and integrated watersheds across critical spatial and temporal scales. This FOA will consider applications that focus on improving the understanding and representation of terrestrial and subsurface environments in ways that advance the sophistication and capabilities of local, regional, and larger scale models.

Projects include a variety of ecological improvements along with targeted community outreach, education and stewardship. Ecological improvements may include one or more of the following: wetland, riparian, forest and coastal habitat restoration; wildlife conservation, community tree canopy enhancement, water quality monitoring and green infrastructure best management practices for managing run-off. Projects should also increase access to the benefits of nature, reduce the impact of environmental hazards and engage local communities, particularly underserved communities, in project planning, outreach and implementation. 

Creating solutions to pressing environmental and sustainability challenges will require input and imaginative approaches from various fields, perspectives, and disciplines. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), in their report "Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century: Addressing Grand Challenges," identified five critical challenges we must address as a society: o Sustainably supply food, water, and energy o Curb climate change and adapt to its impacts o Design a future without pollution and waste o Create efficient, healthy, and resilient cities o Foster informed decisions and actions The report further states, "The challenges provide focal points for evolving environmental engineering education, research, and practice toward increased contributions and a greater impact. Implementing this new model will require modifications in educational curriculum and creative approaches to foster interdisciplinary research on complex social and environmental problems." This solicitation aims to address these grand challenges by supporting a collaborative research model that seamlessly integrates sustainability, environmental engineering, and process science and engineering. Accordingly, the Environmental Convergence Opportunities in Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (ECO-CBET) solicitation will support activities that confront vexing environmental engineering and sustainability problems by uncovering and incorporating fundamental knowledge to design new processes, materials, and devices from a systems-level perspective. Projects should be compelling and reflect sustained, coordinated efforts from interdisciplinary research teams.

This Notice of Intent provides potential applicants advance notice that the Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy intends to issue a Funding Opportunity Announcement No. DE-FOA-0002192, titled Extreme Environment Materials for Power Generation. The objective of the planned FOA is to competitively solicit and award research and development projects that will focus on materials research,development,testing, and validation to enhance the domestic materials supply chain and the reliability of the existing fossil power generation fleet.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), an organization within the Department of Energy (DOE), is chartered by Congress in the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69), as amended by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-358) to: "(A) to enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies that result in- (i) reductions of imports of energy from foreign sources; (ii) reductions of energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; and (iii) improvement in the energy efficiency of all economic sectors; and (B) to ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies."

The Water and Energy for Food ("WE4F") challenge fund is a partnership between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Sweden through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (hereafter the partners[1]). Through WE4F, the partners want to expand the scale of innovations that impact the sectors food and water, food and energy or all three sectors of the nexus (food, water, energy) to increase the sustainability of agricultural food value chains, improving energy and water efficiency as well as to improve climate resilient agriculture in developing countries and emerging markets in accordance with the SDGs, with a particular focus on the poor and women.

SC hereby invites grant applications for support under the Early Career Research Program in the following program areas: Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR); Biological and Environmental Research (BER); Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES); High Energy Physics (HEP), and Nuclear Physics (NP). The purpose of this program is to support the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and to stimulate research careers in the areas supported by SC.

The Funders' Network (TFN), in partnership with the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, is pleased to announce the opening of Round 16 of the Partners for Places grant program. Partners for Places is a successful matching grant program that improves U.S. and Canadian communities by building partnerships between local government sustainability leaders and place-based foundations. National funders invest in local projects developed through these partnerships to promote a healthy environment, a strong economy and well-being for all residents. Through these investments, Partners for Places fosters long-term relationships that make our communities more prosperous, livable and vibrant. In addition to the general grant program, Round 16 also includes dedicated funding to support green stormwater infrastructure projects that advance water-related sustainability goals.

The Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems Division (ECCS) supports enabling and transformative engineering research at the nano, micro, and macro scales that fuels progress in engineering system applications with high societal impact. This includes fundamental engineering research underlying advanced devices and components and their seamless penetration in power, controls, networking, communications or cyber systems. The research is envisioned to be empowered by cutting-edge computation, synthesis, evaluation, and analysis technologies and is to result in significant impact for a variety of application domains in healthcare, homeland security, disaster mitigation, telecommunications, energy, environment, transportation, manufacturing, and other systems-related areas. ECCS also supports new and emerging research areas encompassing 5G and Beyond Spectrum and Wireless Technologies, Quantum Information Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Big Data.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) is soliciting investigator initiated research that will further the understanding of potential risk factors for ALS, while supporting the ATSDR National ALS Registry's mission. The National ALS Registry's goals are to estimate the number of new ALS cases each year, estimate the number of people who have ALS at a specific point in time, better understand who gets ALS, and identify what contributing factors, including environmental, may affect ALS. ATSDR is seeking investigator-initiated research that will identify and evaluate risk factors contributing to ALS, with preferred focus in this Notice of Funding Opportunity on factors related to military service, contact sports, traumatic brain injury, neuroinflammation and infectious agents.

The Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) intends to issue a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled "BOTTLE: Bio-Optimized Technologies to Keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment." This FOA, jointly funded by the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) and Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO), supports the Department's Plastics Innovation Challenge, a comprehensive DOE program to accelerate innovations in energy-efficient plastics recycling technologies, which was announced on November 21, 2019. Additional information regarding the Plastics Innovation Challenge can be found by visiting https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-launches-plastics-innovation-challenge. Current recycling strategies often do not allow for cost-effective recycling of commonly used plastics. Typical recycling techniques can result in diminished material properties, which limit opportunities to produce products from recycled material with equal or greater value. However, there is an opportunity to advance new technologies that use recycled materials to reduce manufacturing energy consumption for some of the most prevalent plastics by up to 50 percent, including those used in grocery bags and beverage bottles. BETO and AMO have identified significant potential to improve the carbon efficiency and energy efficiency of plastics recycling technologies

This Environmental Health Specialists Network (EHS-Net) research opportunity seeks to develop and sustain a network of environmental health program staff, in collaboration with epidemiologists and other public health professionals, to identify retail food safety research practice-based priorities focused on identifying and preventing foodborne illness risk factors, and to conduct the research. This announcement will fund EHS-Net research projects related to food safety activities under the jurisdiction of departments of health or other health agencies responsible for regulatory oversight of retail food service including restaurants, delis, cafeterias, schools, etc. For more information on EHS-Net, please visit our web page at: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/ehsnet/

ecoSolution™ Grants (previously called "Small Grants") have been the defining basis of Captain Planet Foundation's work over the last 25 years. In that time, we have funded over 2,100 projects that have impacted 1.2 million youth around the world - actively fulfilling our mission to build the next generation of environmental stewards and change-agents. ecoSolution™ Grants range from $500-$2,500 and are intended to support solution-oriented, youth-led projects that result in real environmental outcomes. ecoSolution™ Grants are available to educators working with youth in the United States (international projects are by invitation only). Please note that ecoSolution™ Grants will only support direct project costs. Support for t-shirts, staff salaries, field trips, scholarships, beautification/ landscaping, etc. will NOT be considered.

The objective of the proposed activity is to issue a Funding Opportunity Announcement with restricted eligibility among the University and HBCU/OMI community, receive and review the applications, select the top-rated applications for award, negotiate with the selected applicants and complete the award process by issuing grants. Applications submitted in response to the FOA will be evaluated by reviewers from differing backgrounds (e.g., industry and DOE) with the most meritorious applications selected for award.

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is issuing, on behalf of the Vehicle Technologies Office, a Funding Opportunity Announcement entitled, Fiscal Year 2020 Advanced Vehicle Technologies Research Funding Opportunity Announcement. This announcement seeks research projects to address priorities in the following areas: advanced batteries and electrification in support of the recently-announced DOE Energy Storage Grand Challenge; advanced engine and fuel technologies, including technologies for off-road applications and alternative fueled engines; lightweight materials; new mobility technologies (energy efficient mobility systems); and alternative fuels technology demonstrations.

The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) announces the availability of funding through cost reimbursable agreements for the Scientific Cooperation Research Program (SCRP) for fiscal year (FY) 2020. SCRP supports FAS' Borlaug Fellowship Program and other strategic goals and utilizes the scientific communities' accumulated knowledge and technologies to help aid in developing practical solutions to address issues including agricultural trade and market access, animal and plant health, biotechnology, food safety and security, and sustainable natural resource management. All applications must include foreign collaborations, and projects should not exceed two years. Funding may be allocated to foreign collaborators through sub-awards. Background The Scientific Cooperation Research Program (SCRP) is a Foreign Agricultural Service Office,(FAS) administered program that has been in existence for several decades. Historically, SCRP has funded hundreds of collaborative research programs between U.S. and foreign scientists.This program supports up to 10 collaborative research programs annually, up to $50,000.

The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) is issuing this request for information (RFI) to solicit feedback from industry, academia, research laboratories, government agencies, and other stakeholders. This RFI will inform SETO's strategic planning on research related to the integration of solar energy resources. Specifically, this RFI will inform SETO's strategies relating to prediction of (a) solar irradiance reaching the surface of the earth, and (b) power output from solar generation plants, using either photovoltaic (PV) or concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies. Improving solar generation prediction will better inform grid operators as they consider the impacts of solar power variability on grid planning and operations technologies, as well as the owners and operators of utility-scale plants and aggregators of distributed PV systems.