U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced $34.5 million funding for waste stream conversion infrastructure intended to find solutions to problems in underserved communities, a department official said.
The funding is available for projects that can improve the current science and infrastructure for converting waste streams, which often are located disproportionately in underserved communities, according to a March 22 DOE news release.
"This investment represents DOE's commitment to finding solutions that directly support historically underserved communities," Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Kelly Speakes-Backman said in the news release. "We recognize the everyday economic and logistical burden that waste disposal can have on these communities. Through this investment, we see an opportunity to support the bioeconomy and the equitable transition to a clean energy economy."
DOE is looking to fund projects that will convert waste streams into valuable biofuels and bioproducts that benefit the local energy economy.
"This effort will advance the Biden Administration's goals to deliver an equitable, clean energy future, and put the United States on a path to achieve net-zero emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050," the news release said.
The Funding Opportunity Announcement is looking for projects in four topic areas of robust microbial cells, municipal solid waste feedstock technologies, community-scale resource and energy recovery from organic wastes, and robust catalytic processes.
DOE wants to see projects in waste streams that include animal manure, municipal solid waste, wastewater residuals and other organic wastes, all of which are feedstocks that can produce biofuels and bioproducts. Unconverted, these waste streams are economic liabilities to local communities that have to manage them and they often cause "a multitude of health impacts on surrounding populations," the news release said.
DOE's fiscal 2022 Waste Feedstock and Conversion R&D Funding Opportunity funding announcement is intended to project that can develop improved organisms and inorganic catalysts that will support future low-carbon biofuels and bioproducts. DOE is particularly interested in projects that will help enable better use of feedstock waste and provide robust conversion processes that will produce low-carbon biofuels.
Such efforts also would reduce emissions from historical hard-to-decarbonize areas, such as aviation, which is why the funding announcement is complementary to the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge. The challenge is a federal-government-wide effort to achieve zero-carbon in aviation by 2050.
Concept papers are due by 5 p.m. ET on April 18, and applications are due by 5 p.m. ET on June 7.
Anyone who would like more information may email DOE.
