Slots: 1
Deadlines
Internal Deadline: Contact RII.
Concept Paper Deadline: March 23, 2023, 5pm ET
External Deadline: May 9, 2023, 5pm ET
Award Information
Award Type: Cooperative Agreement
Estimated Number of Awards: 10 – 30
Anticipated Award Amount: $30M
Who May Serve as PI:
The proposed prime recipient and subrecipient(s) must be domestic entities. The following types of domestic entities are eligible to participate as a prime recipient or subrecipient of this FOA:
- Institutions of higher education;
- For-profit entities;
- Non-profit entities; and
- State and local governmental entities, and tribal nations.
Link to Award: https://eere-exchange.energy.gov/Default.aspx#FoaId485c2512-9907-41b4-8c3d-25229afc2546
Process for Limited Submissions
PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Research Initiatives and Infrastructure (RII) Application Portal: https://rii.usc.edu/oor-portal/. Use the template provided here:
RII-Limited-Submission-Application-Template.
Materials to submit include:
- (1) Two-Page Proposal Summary (0.5” margins; single-spaced; font type: Arial, Helvetica, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 2-page limit will be excluded from review. You must use the template linked above.
- (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)
Note: The portal requires information about the PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#, Gender, and Ethnicity. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.
Purpose
This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is being issued by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) on behalf of the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO). The goals of this FOA are to:
• Further develop broad, foundational, manufacturing platform technologies and address gaps and barriers that are currently limiting use of composite materials in clean energy and decarbonization-related applications with wind energy applications as the primary FOA focus;
• Enable additive manufacturing processes for rapid prototyping, tooling, fabrication, and testing of large wind blades;
• Apply additive manufacturing to non-blade wind turbine components; and
• Mature nascent technologies, processes, and methods that improve one or more aspects of advanced composites manufacturing, including automation, and sustainability (including recycling) of these materials.
These goals align with DOE’s priorities in advancing clean-energy applications and energy savings through materials and manufacturing R&D, the National Offshore Wind Strategy1 , and national offshore wind goal to “deploy 30 Gigawatts of Offshore Wind by 2030”2,3 This addresses a top priority of the Biden Administration, which seeks to achieve carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035 and 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”.4 Furthermore, this FOA is well aligned with AMMTO’s strategic objectives to advance manufacturing competitiveness and enable secure and sustainable domestic supply chains for clean energy technologies in the United States.
This FOA focuses on the application of composite materials and additive manufacturing (AM) to offshore wind energy systems; however, AMMTO recognizes and encourages the broad applicability of solutions developed under this FOA to other important clean energy and decarbonization areas such as transportation, compressed gas storage, recycling, and sustainability. AMMTO is committed to pushing the frontiers of materials and manufacturing science and engineering, catalyzing clean energy jobs through research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D), and ensuring environmental justice and inclusion of underserved communities.
DOE has long-recognized “Lightweight, high-strength, and high-stiffness composite materials … as an important cross-cutting technology in U.S. manufacturing. These materials have the potential to improve the energy efficiency of the transportation sector, enable more efficient power generation, improve the storage and transport of low-carbon fuels, and improve manufacturing processes.5” To reach this potential, advanced manufacturing techniques to enable an expansion of cost-competitive production of composite materials at commercial volumes has been a key DOE target as identified in the 2015 QTR Technology Assessment6 , and the Advanced Manufacturing Office’s (AMO’s) 2017 Multi-Year Program Plan7 . This led to the creation of a Manufacturing USA institute, the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI)8 , and to AMMTO’s portfolio of composites materials and polymer AM R&D projects.
AMMTO and IACMI have focused previous and current composites work on high volume carbon, glass, bio-derived and emerging fiber composite manufacturing with end use applications including lightweight vehicles, compressed gas storage, wind turbine blades, and various industrial applications including AM tooling, together with workforce development. Benefits include light-weighting of structural and non-structural components in a range of transportation applications, the ability to enable fuel storage for low carbon hydrogen and compressed natural gas, and power generation from renewable sources such as wind and marine energy.
By focusing on wind energy materials and manufacturing technology challenges, this FOA not only seeks to support the Administration’s offshore wind goals, but also to develop manufacturing solutions that can be applied to other clean energy applications.
In February 2022, DOE published “America’s Strategy to Secure the Supply Chain for a Robust Clean Energy Transition”9 — the first comprehensive U.S. government plan to build an Energy Sector Industrial Base. In addition to the strategy report, DOE developed 13 deep-dive assessments on specific technologies and crosscutting topics – including a deep-dive report on wind energy10 . Highlights addressed by this FOA include:
• Opportunities to strengthen U.S. manufacturing capabilities, including advanced manufacturing technologies, such as additive manufacturing;
• Innovative materials that enable design-for-reuse/recycling structures;
• Next generation materials such as new, fully-recyclable, non-hazardous polymers and resins, and related demonstrations (e.g., for wind turbine blades, fuel cells and electrolyzers);
• Automation and other advancements in blade manufacturing to reduce the quantity and increase the productivity of labor content; and
• Modularization, customization, and onsite manufacturing to ease transport requirements.
The mission of AMMTO is to advance energy-related materials and manufacturing technologies to increase domestic competitiveness and build a clean, decarbonized economy. AMMTO’s vision for the future is a competitive U.S. manufacturing sector that accelerates the adoption of innovative material and manufacturing technologies in support of a clean, decarbonized economy, such as can be realized by projects under this FOA.
This FOA supports the administration goals laid out above by materials and manufacturing R&D that supports the 2030 and 2050 national offshore wind goals, addresses a top Administration priority which seeks to achieve carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035 and 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.
Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.