Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Incubator 2 Funding Opportunity Announcement

The overall strategic goal of the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) is to develop commercially viable bioenergy and bioproducts to enable sustainable, nationwide production of biofuels that are compatible with today’s transportation infrastructure, can reduce GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions relative to petroleum-derived fuels, and can displace a share of petroleum-derived fuels to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and encourage the creation of a new domestic bioenergy industry.

BETO has targeted a performance goal of validating, at pilot scale, at least one technology pathway for hydrocarbon biofuel at a mature modeled cost of $3/GGE (gasoline gallon equivalent) with GHG emissions reduction of 50% or more compared to petroleum-derived fuel by 2017, and validating two additional pathways by 2022.

These high level strategic and performance goals are expanded in further detail in BETO’s multi-year program plan (MYPP). BETO most recently updated its MYPP in March 2015 . The MYPP identifies many technical barriers that must be overcome through research, development and deployment in order for BETO to meet these overall strategic and performance goals. BETO has issued several Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) to address the technical barriers delineated in the MYPP, and has done so in a way to focus its resources in a limited number of pathways/approaches to ensure that the program initiatives are supported at a critical mass (both in terms of dollars and time) for maximum impact and for the highest probability of success. BETO has communicated its project portfolio in public via the 2013 Peer Review and 2015 Peer Review.

However, BETO recognizes that there may be very novel and potentially disruptive ideas that do not necessarily satisfy the requirement of specific FOAs yet still meet BETO’s goals and mission. The Bioenergy Incubator Program is intended to identify these potentially impactful ideas that are not meaningfully addressed in BETO’s strategic plan or project portfolio. It is NOT intended to fund projects that are incremental improvements to current products or processes or for established work in BETO’s strategic plan or current portfolio.

BETO is issuing this Incubator 2 FOA to support innovative technologies and solutions that could help meet existing goals but are not currently represented in a significant way in the BETO’s MYPP and current project portfolio.

The full Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is posted on the EERE eXCHANGE website at https://eere-exchange.energy.gov. To apply to this FOA, Applicants must register with and submit application materials through EERE Exchange at https://eere-Exchange.energy.gov, EERE’s online application portal.

Additional clarification of areas of non-interest was added in the highlighted sections on pages 4-5 of the FOA to include the following:

The following types of applications will be deemed nonresponsive and will not be reviewed or considered (See Section III.D of the FOA):

• Applications that propose exploratory, basic science research (earlier than TRL 2).
• Applications that are at the demonstration and deployment phase (later than TRL 5).
• Applications that use food or feed carbohydrates, lipids, or proteins (e.g. maize or wheat dextrose, beet sucrose, sugar care or grain sorghum syrup, soybean oil or meal), and/or derivatives (e.g. amino acids from maize dextrose, glycerol from the transesterification of soybean oil).

For Topic 1 (Algae Feedstocks R&D), the additional areas of non-interest were added:

• Applications that propose to develop technology that relies on purely heterotrophic algae cultivation.
• Applications that propose mixotrophic algae cultivation strategies that utilize food-based sugars (i.e., derived from food-based crops including but not limited to corn, beets, sorghum, and sugar cane).
• Applications that propose to develop technology for the artificial lighting-based cultivation of algae for energy products (other than as an enabling tool for high-throughput laboratory-based screening).
• Applications that propose to work on biomass other than algae biomass (e.g. lignocellulosic biomass, non-algae micro-organisms, fungi, etc.).

The overall strategic goal of the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) is to develop commercially viable bioenergy and bioproducts to enable sustainable, nationwide production of biofuels that are compatible with today’s transportation infrastructure, can reduce GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions relative to petroleum-derived fuels, and can displace a share of petroleum-derived fuels to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and encourage the creation of a new domestic bioenergy industry.

BETO has targeted a performance goal of validating, at pilot scale, at least one technology pathway for hydrocarbon biofuel at a mature modeled cost of $3/GGE (gasoline gallon equivalent) with GHG emissions reduction of 50% or more compared to petroleum-derived fuel by 2017, and validating two additional pathways by 2022.

These high level strategic and performance goals are expanded in further detail in BETO’s multi-year program plan (MYPP). BETO most recently updated its MYPP in March 2015 . The MYPP identifies many technical barriers that must be overcome through research, development and deployment in order for BETO to meet these overall strategic and performance goals. BETO has issued several Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) to address the technical barriers delineated in the MYPP, and has done so in a way to focus its resources in a limited number of pathways/approaches to ensure that the program initiatives are supported at a critical mass (both in terms of dollars and time) for maximum impact and for the highest probability of success. BETO has communicated its project portfolio in public via the 2013 Peer Review and 2015 Peer Review.

However, BETO recognizes that there may be very novel and potentially disruptive ideas that do not necessarily satisfy the requirement of specific FOAs yet still meet BETO’s goals and mission. The Bioenergy Incubator Program is intended to identify these potentially impactful ideas that are not meaningfully addressed in BETO’s strategic plan or project portfolio. It is NOT intended to fund projects that are incremental improvements to current products or processes or for established work in BETO’s strategic plan or current portfolio.

BETO is issuing this Incubator 2 FOA to support innovative technologies and solutions that could help meet existing goals but are not currently represented in a significant way in the BETO’s MYPP and current project portfolio.

The full Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is posted on the EERE eXCHANGE website at https://eere-exchange.energy.gov. To apply to this FOA, Applicants must register with and submit application materials through EERE Exchange at https://eere-Exchange.energy.gov, EERE’s online application portal.

BETO has targeted a performance goal of validating, at pilot scale, at least one technology pathway for hydrocarbon biofuel at a mature modeled cost of $3/GGE (gasoline gallon equivalent) with GHG emissions reduction of 50% or more compared to petroleum-derived fuel by 2017, and validating two additional pathways by 2022.

These high level strategic and performance goals are expanded in further detail in BETO’s multi-year program plan (MYPP). BETO most recently updated its MYPP in March 2015 . The MYPP identifies many technical barriers that must be overcome through research, development and deployment in order for BETO to meet these overall strategic and performance goals. BETO has issued several Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) to address the technical barriers delineated in the MYPP, and has done so in a way to focus its resources in a limited number of pathways/approaches to ensure that the program initiatives are supported at a critical mass (both in terms of dollars and time) for maximum impact and for the highest probability of success. BETO has communicated its project portfolio in public via the 2013 Peer Review and 2015 Peer Review.

However, BETO recognizes that there may be very novel and potentially disruptive ideas that do not necessarily satisfy the requirement of specific FOAs yet still meet BETO’s goals and mission. The Bioenergy Incubator Program is intended to identify these potentially impactful ideas that are not meaningfully addressed in BETO’s strategic plan or project portfolio. It is NOT intended to fund projects that are incremental improvements to current products or processes or for established work in BETO’s strategic plan or current portfolio.

BETO is issuing this Incubator 2 FOA to support innovative technologies and solutions that could help meet existing goals but are not currently represented in a significant way in the BETO’s MYPP and current project portfolio.

The full Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is posted on the EERE eXCHANGE website at https://eere-exchange.energy.gov. To apply to this FOA, Applicants must register with and submit application materials through EERE Exchange at https://eere-Exchange.energy.gov, EERE’s online application portal.