FY24 Cross-Sector Technologies Funding Opportunity Announcement

Office: Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office 
Available Funding: $38 million 
FOA Number: DE-FOA-0003205

The Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office (IEDO) announced a $38 million funding opportunity focused on cross-sector technologies for industrial decarbonization. Through this funding opportunity, IEDO seeks high-impact, applied research, development, and pilot demonstration (RD&D) projects that will help drive the transformational cross-sector technologies and innovations required to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the industrial sector. The projects selected for this funding opportunity will advance a clean and equitable energy economy, bolster the technological and economic competitiveness of domestic manufacturing, and boost the viability and competitiveness of U.S. industrial technology exports.

This funding opportunity is part of  DOE’s Technologies for Industrial Emissions Reduction Development (TIEReD) Program—an integrated, industrial decarbonization technology development strategy for DOE’s basic and applied research offices. Underpinned by the principles identified in the 2022 Industrial Decarbonization Roadmap, DOE is building an innovation pipeline to accelerate the development and adoption of industrial decarbonization technologies with investments spanning foundational science; RD&D; and technical assistance and workforce development. This FOA will also advance the goal of the Industrial Heat Shot™, which aims to develop cost-competitive industrial heat decarbonization technologies with at least 85% lower greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.  

Topic Areas

Topic 1 – Electrification of Industrial Heat
Process heating, or thermal processing, is essential to the manufacture of a wide variety of industrial and consumer products, supplying the thermal energy needed to transform materials by drying, curing, melting, forming, sintering, calcining, and smelting. In 2018, process heating accounted for 31% of sectoral energy use and 51% of sectoral energy-related GHG emissions—trends that are mirrored across numerous manufacturing subsectors. This topic focuses on high-impact opportunities in the development of equipment and components to decarbonize thermal processes across the industrial sector, including electrotechnologies (Area of Interest 1) and industrial heat pumps (Area of Interest 2). 

Topic 2 – Efficient Energy Use in Industrial Systems
Innovations in energy systems are needed at multiple levels to reduce the energy and emissions intensity of industrial operations. These innovations include both improvements to established, foundational technologies as well as development of totally new approaches to production. At the process level, new alternative process technologies are needed to reduce thermal demand and resulting emissions; plant-level energy use can be optimized through efficient management of materials and energy using integrated systems of advanced sensors, controls, data platforms, and efficient process equipment; and industrial facilities can contribute to energy systems outside the plant while simultaneously improving their own resiliency, emissions intensity, and operating economics by adopting technologies to enable more flexible operations. From this range of priorities, this topic focuses on equipment for low thermal budget separations (Area of Interest 1: Advanced Membrane Separations) and for thermal management (Area of Interest 2: Industrial Heat Exchangers). 

Topic 3 – Decarbonizing Organic Wastewater and Wet Waste Treatment
The EPA estimates direct GHG emissions from water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) at approximately 44 MMT CO2e with additional indirect emissions from energy usage, sludge transportation, and associated methane releases from landfills. Agricultural organic wastes and wastewaters, which are significant contributors to agricultural GHG emissions, and food wastes, including both post-consumer wastes and wastes from food and beverage manufacturing, represent another set of energy recovery and GHG reduction opportunities. This topic focuses on decarbonization of unit processes for treating wet organic waste from municipal, industrial, and agricultural sources, particularly those that have additional co-benefits such as nutrient recovery, energy neutrality, and cost minimization.

More Information 

• View the FOA.
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Visit EERE Exchange for updates. EERE envisions awarding multiple financial assistance awards in the form of cooperative agreements. The estimated period of performance for each award will be approximately 24 to 36 months.