This FOA offers a critical opportunity to solidify a “first-mover” advantage for U.S. industry, bolstering its competitiveness globally for decades into the future. Activities funded under this FOA are further expected to create good-paying jobs for American workers, offer opportunities for broadly shared prosperity in communities, and enable a clean, more equitable future for all Americans.
Demonstrating the technical and commercial viability of industrial decarbonization approaches will promote widespread technology implementation and drive a U.S. edge in low- and net-zero carbon manufacturing while helping to substantiate a market for low-carbon products.
To maximize the transformative potential for these funds, DOE will prioritize a portfolio of projects that offer:
- Deep decarbonization, by demonstrating significantly less carbon-intensive industrial production processes leading to materials that can be labeled as having substantially lower levels of embodied greenhouse gas emissions;
- Timeliness, through rapid technology demonstrations that can address emissions in the near-term, meet funding horizons, and be replicated by fast followers;
- Market viability, with technological approaches designed to spur follow-on investments for widespread decarbonization as well as partnerships between buyers and sellers of the materials produced, with special consideration given to industries that are focusing on shifting entire ecosystems and enabling new market structures for low-carbon products; and
- Community benefits, tailored through substantial engagement with local and regional stakeholders, as well as labor unions and Tribal Nations across the project lifecycle, supporting environmental justice and economic opportunity for local communities.
DOE expects to award up to approximately 65 projects in high GHG-emitting industries and for cross-cutting technologies as discussed in Section 1.3 of the FOA. DOE anticipates providing awards to teams that are led by a single, for-profit organization or owner/operator of an eligible facility and encourages applicants to strengthen projects by partnering with experts, universities, labor unions, community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, product off-takers, and/or national laboratories, as outlined in Section 3.0 of the FOA.
Given the transformative potential of these funds, DOE seeks first- or early-of-a-kind commercial-scale projects. These could include new technologies that have been proven at a pilot scale but have yet to be deployed commercially, technologies that are being pursued internationally but do not have a foothold in the U.S., or other early-of-a-kind projects that face market or adoption risks. All projects should incorporate a path from demonstration to deployment that includes sustained operation after completion and substantiate the projects’ ability to meet priority criteria.
DOE will apply the following four-phase structure for projects selected under this FOA:
- Phase 1 will encompass initial planning and analysis activities to ensure that the overall concept is technologically and financially viable.
- Phase 2 will finalize engineering designs and business development, site access, labor agreements, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review, permitting, and offtake agreements.
- Phase 3 will encompass installation, integration, and construction activities.
- Phase 4 will ramp-up to full operations including data collection to analyze the plant’s operations, performance, and financial viability.
NOTE: This FOA solicits plans for all four phases of proposed activities; projects that have completed initial phases will be eligible to undergo accelerated early reviews for due diligence. DOE will work with project performers to tailor their specific approach after selections and anticipates that implementation approaches will vary between projects. All projects selected under this FOA will be eligible to complete all four phases pending successful execution of milestones; DOE is not planning a competitive down-select process among projects after awards. However, to manage risk DOE will regularly review and evaluate projects’ progress on deliverables through Go / No-Go reviews that will occur between or within phases.
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