ARPA-E SMARTFARM SBIR/STTR Grant

The purpose of this modification is to incorporates changes to the Funding Opportunity Announcement, DE-FOA-0002251:

• Updated Technical Performance Targets associated with Categories 1 & 2. See Section I.F of the FOA.
• Updated U.S. Manufacturing Requirements for FFRDCS/DOE Labs and State and Local Government Entities. See Section VI.B.6 of the FOA.

To obtain a copy of the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) please go to the ARPA-E website at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov. ARPA-E will not review or consider full applications submitted through other means. For detailed guidance on using ARPA-E eXCHANGE, please refer to the
ARPA-E eXCHANGE User Guide (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx).

The purpose of this modification is to incorporates changes to the Funding Opportunity Announcement, DE-FOA-0002251:

• Updated Program Overview. See Section I.C of the FOA
• Updated U.S. Manufacturing Requirements for FFRDCS/DOE Labs and State and Local Government Entities. See Section VI.B.6 of the FOA.

To obtain a copy of the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) please go to the ARPA-E website at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov. ARPA-E will not review or consider full applications submitted through other means. For detailed guidance on using ARPA-E eXCHANGE, please refer to the
ARPA-E eXCHANGE User Guide (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx).

The purpose of this modification is to incorporates changes to the Funding Opportunity Announcement, DE-FOA-0002251:

• Inserted certain deadlines, including the deadlines for submitting questions and Full Applications. See Cover Page and Required Documents Checklist.
• Updated anticipated SBIRS/STTR award amounts, see Cover Page and Section II.A of the FOA.
• Updated language on Technical Categories of Interest and Technical Performance Targets. See Sections I.E and I.F of the FOA.
• Modified Concept Paper submission requirements, see Required Documents checklist, and Sections III.F.1 and IV.C of the FOA.
• Increased Full Application preparation time from 45 days to 60 days in Section IV.A.4 of the FOA.
• Revised the following sections of the FOA to provide guidance on required application forms and the content and form of Full Applications and Replies to Reviewer Comments: Required Documents Checklist and Sections IV.D, IV.E, and IV.G of the FOA. Applicants are strongly encouraged to use the templates provided on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov).
• Inserted criteria that ARPA-E will use to evaluate Full Applications, see Section V.A.2 of the FOA.
• Inserted criteria that ARPA-E will use to evaluate Replies to Reviewer Comments in Section V.A.3 of the FOA.
• Updated Section V.B.I of the FOA to include Qualified Opportunity Zone Program Policy Factor
• Inserted information on the anticipated announcement and award dates, see Section V.C of the FOA.
• Inserted information concerning Full Application Notifications, see Section VI.A.3 of the FOA.
• Inserted Administrative and National Policy Requirements, see Section VI.B of the FOA.
• Inserted Reporting Requirements, see Section VI.C of the FOA.

To obtain a copy of the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) please go to the ARPA-E website at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov. ARPA-E will not review or consider full applications submitted through other means. For detailed guidance on using ARPA-E eXCHANGE, please refer to the
ARPA-E eXCHANGE User Guide (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx).

Agency Overview:

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.”

ARPA-E issues this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) under the programmatic authorizing statute codified at 42 U.S.C. § 16538. The FOA and any awards made under this FOA are subject to 2 C.F.R. Part 200 as amended by 2 C.F.R. Part 910.

ARPA-E funds research on and the development of high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment. The agency focuses on technologies that can be meaningfully advanced with a modest investment over a defined period of time in order to catalyze the translation from scientific discovery to early-stage technology. For the latest news and information about ARPA-E, its programs and the research projects currently supported, see: http://arpa-e.energy.gov/.

Program Overview:

U.S. agriculture has the potential to produce ~5 Quadrillion Btu of energy in the form of biofuels, and with new innovations throughout the biofuel supply chain, these fuels could become carbon negative. Reaching this potential and achieving greater carbon reductions requires that feedstock producers adopt new technologies and management practices that simultaneously improve yield, drive down production associated emissions, and enhance carbon sequestration in soils. To facilitate the adoption of these new technologies and practices for improved carbon management, feedstock producers need incentives beyond yield. While carbon management incentive structures exist elsewhere in the biofuel supply chain, they do not extend to feedstock production because monitoring and verification of feedstock production emissions is too costly to conduct at the field level. Instead, all feedstock producers are assumed to produce the same amount of emissions— the national average —despite significant variations in actual emissions when moving to state or regional averages, let alone field-level estimates.

The objective of the Systems for Monitoring and Analytics for Renewable Transportation Fuels from Agricultural Resources and Management (SMARTFARM) program is to bridge the data gap in the biofuel supply chain by funding the development of technologies that can replace national averages and emissions factors for feedstock-related emissions with field-level estimates. The value of such technologies will be evaluated by their ability to reliably, accurately (i.e. low uncertainty), and cost-effectively quantify feedstock production lifecycle emissions (in g CO2e/acre) at the field level (i.e. scalable to >80 acres). If successful, the technologies funded by this phase of the SMARTFARM program will catalyze new market incentives for efficiency in feedstock production and carbon management, reducing annual U.S. emissions by ~1%, and with substantially greater potential emissions reductions implications if expanded to other agricultural products beyond biofuels.