The U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) has announced that it intends to issue, on behalf of the Fuel Cell Technologies Office (FCTO), a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled “Fuel Cell Technologies Office Annual FOA.”
The FCTO is a key component of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) EERE portfolio. Fuel cells powered by hydrogen from renewable or low-carbon resources can lead to substantial energy savings and reductions in imported petroleum and carbon emissions. The FCTO aims to provide clean, safe, secure, affordable, and reliable energy from diverse domestic resources, providing the benefits of increased energy security and reduced criteria pollutants and green-house gas emissions through research, development and demonstration (RD&D) to address both key technical challenges for fuel cells and hydrogen fuels (i.e., hydrogen production, delivery and storage) and institutional barriers such as hydrogen codes and standards.
It is anticipated that the FOA will include 4 topics that are detailed below. The first 3 topics will leverage FCTO’s national lab consortia launched under the DOE Energy Materials Network (EMN) in FY16, in support of the President’s Materials Genome Initiative and advanced manufacturing priorities. Consortia that will be leveraged include: ElectroCat, HydroGEN, and HyMARC. Applicants will be encouraged to leverage consortia capabilites in their research, and share research results with consortia data portals. Interested applicants are encouraged to explore consortia capabilites, and interface with consortia steering committees prior to the release of the FOA. To help facilitate this, FCTO plans to hold webinars and/or weekly public teleconferences with technical representatives from each consortium in the coming weeks, wherein interested applicants can ask questions about the consortia’s capabilities. These webinars and teleconferences will be open to the public and their recordings will be publicly posted to ensure everyone has the same access. To ensure you are notified of upcoming FCTO webinars, please subscribe to our Fuel Cell News and Financial Opportunity Updates at the following link: http://energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/subscribe-news-and-financial-opportunity-updates.
This Notice of Intent (NOI) is issued so that interested parties are aware of the EERE’s intention to issue this FOA in the near term. All of the information contained in this NOI is subject to change. EERE will not respond to questions concerning this NOI. Once the FOA has been released, EERE will provide an avenue for potential applicants to submit questions.
EERE plans to issue the FOA in the Fall of 2016 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.
Interested applicants are encouraged to interface with the ElectroCat Steering Committee to understand the consortium’s capabilities, and determine potential for collaboration before the FOA is released. Once the FOA is released, communication with the Steering Committee will be restricted to public webinars and teleconferences.