Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published two funding opportunities.

On November 8, 2019, the DOE announced that $12 million will be available in funds for new projects to support research and development (R&D) and education and workforce development to increase plastics recovery, recycling, reuse, and remanufacturing. Designed for U.S. manufacturers, 12 to 18 exploratory and full R&D projects and four to eight education and workforce development projects will be funded by DOE’s Reducing Embodied Energy and Decreasing Emissions (REMADE) Manufacturing Institute. REMADE was founded in 2017 in partnership with DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE) Advanced Manufacturing Office. The REMADE Manufacturing Institute aims to enable early-stage applied R&D of technologies that could dramatically reduce embodied energy and carbon dioxide emissions resulting from industrial-scale materials production and processing. This particular opportunity will focus on projects that align with REMADE’s research focus areas:

• Development of novel manufacturing and recycling technologies to increase secondary feedstock use by 20 percent without loss of properties or performance;

• Design of alternatives to increase recovery, recycling, reuse, and remanufacturing of products at the end of their life cycles;

• Development of technologies to separate and recover specific polymers and metal in e-waste materials;

• Technological advancements to remove pigments from polymers; and

• Provision of cutting-edge training in recycling for the American workforce and in support of the development of a new REMADE professional certificate program.

REMADE is currently accepting letters of intent, which are due today. Full proposals are due on December 18, 2019. Further submission information is available on REMADE’s website.

On November 12, 2019, DOE published a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for topics for its Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I Release 2 funding. Participating in this FOA are the following DOE program offices:

• Office of Cyber Security, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER);

• Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (NNSA);

• Office of Electricity (OE);

• EERE;

• Office of Environmental Management (EM);

• Office of Fossil Energy (FE);

• Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (FES);

• Office of High Energy Physics (HEP); and

• Office of Nuclear Energy (NE).

Interested applicants may register for one or more of DOE’s FY 2020 Phase I Release 2 SBIR/STTR Topics webinars. Presented by DOE Topic Managers, a series of three 90-minute webinars will be available:

• November 18, 2019 -- Webinar 1 on CESER, NNSA, OE, EM, and FE Topics 1-5 and 19-25

• November 19, 2019 -- Webinar 2 on EERE Topics 6-17

• November 20, 2019 -- Webinar 3 on FES, HEP, and NE Topics 26-38

For those unable to participate in the live webinars, they will be recorded and made available online.

In addition to the aforementioned webinars, a fourth one will be held to discuss the FOA and application process. This webinar will be held on December 19, 2019.