Notice of Intent to Issue Funding Opportunity Announcement “Bioenergy Technologies Incubator 2” (No. DE-FOA-0001320)

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) intends to issue, on behalf of the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled “Bioenergy Technologies Incubator 2”. BETO’s mission is to engage in research and development (R&D) and demonstration activities at increasing scale to transform renewable biomass resources into commercially viable, high-performance biofuels, as well as bioproducts and biopower that enable biofuel production. To accomplish this mission, BETO develops a strategic plan, or multi-year program plan, to identify the technical challenges and barriers that need to be overcome. These technical challenges and barriers form the basis for BETO to issue funding opportunities announcements (FOAs) for financial assistance awards in these specific areas. However, BETO recognizes that there may be novel and potentially disruptive ideas that do not necessarily satisfy the requirement of specific FOAs, yet still meet the goals and mission of BETO. 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 established work in BETO’s strategic plan or current portfolio. It is anticipated that the FOA will have two topic areas. Topic Area 1 will be open to all proposals that seek to develop novel, non-incremental technologies that facilitate the goals of BETO’s Algae platform, but are not represented in a significant way in the current Algae project portfolio. Topic Area 2 will be open to all proposals that seek to develop novel, non-incremental technologies that facilitate the goals of BETO, but are not represented in a significant way in the current Feedstocks or Conversion project portfolios. The FOA will describe areas of non-interest (that is, areas that BETO is funding in a significant way) with greater specificity. It is expected that proposals will be at early Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), ranging from 2 (technology concept and/or application formulated) to 4 (component and/or breadboard validation in laboratory environment). EERE envisions awarding multiple financial assistance awards in the form of cooperative agreements. The estimated period of performance for each award will be approximately 12-24 months. This Notice is issued so that interested parties are aware of EERE’s intention to issue this FOA in the near term. All of the information contained in this Notice is subject to change. EERE will not respond to questions concerning this Notice. Once the FOA has been released, EERE will provide an avenue for potential Applicants to submit questions. EERE plans to issue the FOA in July 2015 via the EERE Exchange website (https://eere-exchange.energy.gov/). If Applicants wish to receive official notifications and information from EERE regarding this FOA, they should register in EERE Exchange. When the FOA is released, applications will be accepted only through EERE Exchange.