The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to more than $96 million in funding (DE-FOA-0002203) for bioenergy research and development. Topic areas within this FOA will advance DOE’s Bioenergy Technology Office’s objectives of reducing the price of drop-in biofuels; lowering the cost of biopower; and enabling high-value products from biomass or waste resources.

Topic areas include:

• Scale-Up of Bench Applications (SCUBA) (up to $28M): Reducing scale-up risk of biofuel and bioproduct processes.

• Waste to Energy Strategies for a Bioeconomy (up to $18M): Addressing ways to use materials that are currently “waste” to make energy and new products, including strategies for municipal solid waste; wet wastes, like food and manures; and municipal waste water treatment.

• Algae Bioproducts and CO₂ Direct-Air-Capture and Efficiency (ABCDE) (up to $14M): Lowering the cost of algal biofuels by improving carbon efficiency, and/or by employing direct air capture technologies.

• Bio-Restore: Biomass to Restore Natural Resources (up to $8M): Quantifying the economic and environmental benefits associated with growing energy crops, with a focus on restoring water quality and soil health.

• Efficient Wood Heaters (up to $5M): Developing and testing low-emission, high efficiency residential wood heaters.

• Biopower and Products from Urban and Suburban Wastes: North American Multi-University Partnership for Research and Education (up to $15M): Developing innovative technologies to manage major forms of urban and suburban waste, with a focus on using plastic waste to make recycled products and using wastes to produce low-cost biopower.

• Scalable CO₂ Electrocatalysis (up to $8M): Developing low temperature and low pressure CO₂ electrocatalysis technologies for generating chemical building blocks.

The application process will include two phases: a concept paper and a full application. Concept papers are due on 5 March 2020 and full applications are due on 30 April 2020.