ARPA-E Funding Opportunities

This FOA marks the sixth OPEN solicitation in the history of ARPA-E. Since the Agency’s inception in 2009, the three-year periodic cycle of ARPA-E OPEN programs have served as an opportunity to advance transformative energy breakthroughs in critical areas that fall outside the scope of its technology-focused programs. The energy transition towards net-zero by 2050 demands an unprecedented level of innovation. Vision OPEN 2024 challenges the research community to develop groundbreaking technologies to enable a future energy landscape that is dramatically different.

The Vision OPEN 2024 includes three goals that are critical to achieve a sustainable energy and carbon transition with:

1. Greenhouse gas (GHG)-free abundant primary energy;
2. An intermodal energy superhighway that transports diversified forms of primary energy; and
3. A carbon transition that sustainably meets demand for polymers and other materials.

These goals will enable a novel and robust global energy system that responsibly meets the needs and aspirations of future generations. Achieving these three goals by 2050 will necessitate development and deployment of disruptive and ambitious technologies at an unparalleled speed and scale.

The Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential (SCALEUP) Ready Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) provides a vital mechanism for the support of innovative energy R&D that complements ARPA-E’s primary R&D focus on early-stage transformational energy technologies that still require proof-of-concept.

An enduring challenge to ARPA-E’s mission is that even technologies that achieve substantial technical advancement under ARPA-E support face significant remaining technical and commercial risks upon completion of an award's funding period, and thus are at risk of being stranded in their development path once ARPA-E funding ends. Experience across ARPA-E’s diverse energy portfolios, and input from a wide range of investors and industry stakeholders, indicates that pre-commercial “scaling” projects are critical to establishing that performance and cost parameters can be met in practice for these potentially transformative technologies. These pre-commercial scaling projects aim to translate the performance achieved at bench scale to commercially scalable versions of the technology, integrate the technology with broader systems, provide extended performance data, and validate the manufacturability and reliability of new energy technologies. Success in these scaling projects should enable industry, investors, and partners to justify the substantial commitments of financial resources, personnel, manufacturing facilities, and materials necessary to subsequently deploy the technologies at commercial scale.

The objective of SCALEUP Ready is to support the scaling of high-risk and potentially disruptive new technologies across the full spectrum of energy applications. This NOFO focuses only on scale-up and pre-pilot projects of promising technologies that ARPA-E has previously funded – following highly competitive selection processes – and for which the scale-up award would substantially build upon innovations achieved under the original ARPA-E award.

This NOFO will remain open until closed or modified. Applications will be accepted any time while this NOFO remains open.

Update 11/1/24: A webinar providing an overview of the IGNIITE Program is available for potential applicants to view here: https://youtu.be/zO9s4EUU0ZE.

The Inspiring Generations of New Innovators to Impact Technologies in Energy (IGNIITE) 2025 program is designed to support a new cohort of early-career innovators to develop the most disruptive and unconventional ideas into transformative new technologies across the full spectrum of energy applications. This announcement is purposefully broad in technical scope, but eligibility is limited to early-career researchers. In addition to research efforts, awardees will engage with ARPA-E and fellow awardees through dedicated IGNIITE events, meetings, and mentorship activities.

Submissions to this solicitation must propose transformational R&D that has the potential for high impact. If successful, a project could create a new class or new trajectory for an energy technology, with the potential to substantially contribute to ARPA-E’s statutory goals.

Awards under this program may take the form of exploratory research that provides the agency with information useful for the subsequent development of focused technology programs. Alternatively, awards may support proof-of-concept research for a particular new technology in an area not currently supported by the agency.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) provides a continuing opportunity for the rapid support of early-stage applied research to explore innovative new concepts with the potential for transformational and disruptive changes in energy technology. Spurring Projects to Advance Energy Research and Knowledge Swiftly (SPARKS) awards are intended to be flexible and may take the form of analyses or exploratory research that provides the agency with useful information for the subsequent development of focused technology programs. SPARKS awards may also support proof-of-concept research to develop a unique technology concept, either in an area not currently supported by the agency or as a potential enhancement to an ongoing focused technology program. Applications must propose concepts that are not covered by open ARPA-E focused FOAs and that do not represent incremental improvements over existing technology.

SPARKS awards are defined as single-phase efforts of durations of 18 months or less with a total project cost of $500,000 or less and will be issued through Grants. ARPA-E expects to make approximately $10 million per fiscal year available for new awards, subject to the availability of appropriated funds.

Updated SF-424A Budget Justification Workbook template uploaded 9/30/24.

The Technologies to Emend and Obviate SYnthetic Nitrogen’s Toll on Emissions (TEOSYNTE) program aims to lower nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from the cultivation of corn and sorghum used for United States ethanol production by 50%. The program will emphasize plant and microbial bio-design strategies that lower the application of synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizer on corn and sorghum fields while maintaining crop yields and reducing 50% of N2O emissions. Lowering the requirements of synthetic N fertilizer will also lower costs to farmers, as the cost of fertilizer is a significant portion of the operating expenses of a farm. This program will enable technologies to reduce N fertilizer consumption and N2O emissions. These technologies will transform agriculture and lower the N2O contribution to the carbon intensity (CI) of ethanol produced today for light duty vehicles and in the future for sustainable aviation fuel.

Category A: Crop breeding and genetic engineering approaches that alter plant physiology or plant architecture to reduce the requirement of applied N or to prevent N loss to the environment. Examples of these approaches may include, but are not limited to, improving crop N incorporation to a lower applied N rate, or employing biological nitrification inhibition to lower the amount of applied N and reduce N2O emissions.

Category B: Microbial approaches to increase the delivery of N to plants. Examples of these approaches may include, but are not limited to, microbial engineering or microbiome design of N2-fixing endophytic or free-living diazotrophs or utilizing engineered microorganisms, including fungi, to improve soil N mineralization and/or delivery of N to the plant.

Category C: Systemic approaches to facilitate delivery of N by designed interactions between plant and microbe. Proposed projects in Category C may combine the approaches of Categories A and B or focus specifically on the plant-microbe interface. Examples of these approaches may include, but are not limited to, combining plant modifications that improve N uptake with microbial modifications that enhance N delivery, or identifying and enhancing interactions between plant roots and diazotrophic microbes to facilitate the delivery of N.

Category D: Other technologies for coupled N fertilizer reduction and N2O emissions mitigation that do not fit within Categories A, B, and C, if they include elements of plant and/or microbial bio-design.

Concept Paper decisions are available in Exchange as of 9/23/24.

The Technologies to Emend and Obviate SYnthetic Nitrogen’s Toll on Emissions (TEOSYNTE) program aims to lower nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from the cultivation of corn and sorghum used for United States ethanol production by 50%. The program will emphasize plant and microbial bio-design strategies that lower the application of synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizer on corn and sorghum fields while maintaining crop yields and reducing 50% of N2O emissions. Lowering the requirements of synthetic N fertilizer will also lower costs to farmers, as the cost of fertilizer is a significant portion of the operating expenses of a farm. This program will enable technologies to reduce N fertilizer consumption and N2O emissions. These technologies will transform agriculture and lower the N2O contribution to the carbon intensity (CI) of ethanol produced today for light duty vehicles and in the future for sustainable aviation fuel.

Category A: Crop breeding and genetic engineering approaches that alter plant physiology or plant architecture to reduce the requirement of applied N or to prevent N loss to the environment. Examples of these approaches may include, but are not limited to, improving crop N incorporation to a lower applied N rate, or employing biological nitrification inhibition to lower the amount of applied N and reduce N2O emissions.

Category B: Microbial approaches to increase the delivery of N to plants. Examples of these approaches may include, but are not limited to, microbial engineering or microbiome design of N2-fixing endophytic or free-living diazotrophs or utilizing engineered microorganisms, including fungi, to improve soil N mineralization and/or delivery of N to the plant.

Category C: Systemic approaches to facilitate delivery of N by designed interactions between plant and microbe. Proposed projects in Category C may combine the approaches of Categories A and B or focus specifically on the plant-microbe interface. Examples of these approaches may include, but are not limited to, combining plant modifications that improve N uptake with microbial modifications that enhance N delivery, or identifying and enhancing interactions between plant roots and diazotrophic microbes to facilitate the delivery of N.

Category D: Other technologies for coupled N fertilizer reduction and N2O emissions mitigation that do not fit within Categories A, B, and C, if they include elements of plant and/or microbial bio-design.

Concept Paper decisions are available in Exchange as of 9/23/24.

The Nuclear Energy Waste Transmutation Optimized Now (NEWTON) program will support the research and development of technologies that enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel (UNF) to alleviate the impact of storage in permanent disposal facilities. This program seeks to fund the development of novel technologies that increase the overall capacity factor, power output, and efficiency of particle generation systems (including but not limited to proton, neutron, and/or photon), by reducing beam trip magnitude and duration (referred to as loss of beam). Additional technologies will focus on increasing the throughput of transmutation by developing target materials that maximize transmutation rates and are easily processible to remove the transmuted material.

The program will have three categories:

Category A: Technologies related to the generation and acceleration of particle beams that can initiate transmutation reactions. Development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to predict and recover from beam trip events is also within scope.

Category B: Modelling, designing, and fabricating target materials for the enhancement of transmutation of UNF component elements or isotopes, technologies on incorporation methods for transmutable materials into a target, and technologies for processing the transmuted material for waste packaging or isolation of valuable products

Category C: Integration of the technologies developed in Categories A and B into a techno-economic analysis (TEA) of a transmutation facility, improving the performance of the entire system. Category C teams will also maintain a materials and components database for transmutation facilities, which will include nuclear data sets.

The Nuclear Energy Waste Transmutation Optimized Now SBIR/STTR (NEWTON SBIR/STTR) program will support the research and development of technologies that enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel (UNF) to alleviate the impact of storage in permanent disposal facilities. This program seeks to fund the development of novel technologies that increase the overall capacity factor, power output, and efficiency of particle generation systems (including but not limited to proton, neutron, and/or photon), by reducing beam trip magnitude and duration (referred to as loss of beam). Additional technologies will focus on increasing the throughput of transmutation by developing target materials that maximize transmutation rates and are easily processible to remove the transmuted material.

The program will have three categories:

Category A: Technologies related to the generation and acceleration of particle beams that can initiate transmutation reactions. Development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to predict and recover from beam trip events is also within scope.

Category B: Modelling, designing, and fabricating target materials for the enhancement of transmutation of UNF component elements or isotopes, technologies on incorporation methods for transmutable materials into a target, and technologies for processing the transmuted material for waste packaging or isolation of valuable products

Category C: Integration of the technologies developed in Categories A and B into a techno-economic analysis (TEA) of a transmutation facility, improving the performance of the entire system. Category C teams will also maintain a materials and components database for transmutation facilities, which will include nuclear data sets.

The Quantum Computing for Computational Chemistry program (QC³) aims to harness the transformative power of quantum computing to accelerate energy innovation. Computation plays an essential role in modern R&D, but classical computers struggle to simulate quantum systems with the speed, scale, and accuracy necessary to advance many commercial energy applications. This program will support the R&D of scalable, generalizable quantum computing approaches to computational chemistry and materials science. These approaches will be exponentially faster than the classical computing state-of-the-art (SoA), improving speed, accuracy, or problem size by 100 times (100x). This could result in a cumulative energy impact of 1 quadrillion British thermal units (1 quad), which is equal to a reduction of roughly 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) emissions from energy-related activities.

The QC³ program focuses on developing and applying quantum algorithms in key energy research areas where classical methods are insufficient. This includes the development of quantum chemistry algorithms, their translation into quantum circuits or analog programs, and rigorous validation against classical benchmarks and experiments. The goal is to validate these algorithms on a quantum computer with approximately 100 logical qubits to show scalability and practical advantages over classical computation for energy applications.

Projects under this program must complete the following program objectives:

1. Identify a specific problem in chemistry or materials science where a quantum solution, if scalable and generalizable, can lead to cumulative quad-scale energy impact or gigaton-scale reduction in energy-related CO₂e emissions.
2. Develop solutions which are optimized through the full quantum computational stack (applications, software/algorithms, and hardware). The solution must have a provable ability to scale effectively as quantum hardware improves.
3. Have access to and validate on quantum hardware.
4. Complete one of the following:
   1. Achieve a scalable 100x improvement over the classical SoA in speed, accuracy, problem size, or some other relevant capability on the identified energy-relevant problem; or
   2. Prove scalability using hardware resource estimation and running smaller dimensional problems on available quantum hardware if 100x improvement cannot be realized on the identified energy-relevant problem by the end of the performance period.

The Quantum Computing for Computational Chemistry program (QC³) aims to harness the transformative power of quantum computing to accelerate energy innovation. Computation plays an essential role in modern R&D, but classical computers struggle to simulate quantum systems with the speed, scale, and accuracy necessary to advance many commercial energy applications. This program will support the R&D of scalable, generalizable quantum computing approaches to computational chemistry and materials science. These approaches will be exponentially faster than the classical computing state-of-the-art (SoA), improving speed, accuracy, or problem size by 100 times (100x). This could result in a cumulative energy impact of 1 quadrillion British thermal units (1 quad), which is equal to a reduction of roughly 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) emissions from energy-related activities.

The QC³ program focuses on developing and applying quantum algorithms in key energy research areas where classical methods are insufficient. This includes the development of quantum chemistry algorithms, their translation into quantum circuits or analog programs, and rigorous validation against classical benchmarks and experiments. The goal is to validate these algorithms on a quantum computer with approximately 100 logical qubits to show scalability and practical advantages over classical computation for energy applications.

Projects under this program must complete the following program objectives:

1. Identify a specific problem in chemistry or materials science where a quantum solution, if scalable and generalizable, can lead to cumulative quad-scale energy impact or gigaton-scale reduction in energy-related CO₂e emissions.
2. Develop solutions which are optimized through the full quantum computational stack (applications, software/algorithms, and hardware). The solution must have a provable ability to scale effectively as quantum hardware improves.
3. Have access to and validate on quantum hardware.
4. Complete one of the following:
   1. Achieve a scalable 100x improvement over the classical SoA in speed, accuracy, problem size, or some other relevant capability on the identified energy-relevant problem; or
   2. Prove scalability using hardware resource estimation and running smaller dimensional problems on available quantum hardware if 100x improvement cannot be realized on the identified energy-relevant problem by the end of the performance period.

The Galvanizing Leaps in Advanced Super INsulating Glass (GLASING) program will develop Insulated Glass Units (IGUs) for new and retrofit applications that have more than three times the thermal performance of the 50-year-old double-pane IGU technology in wide use at competitive cost and optical performance. This program leverages advances in materials, manufacturing, design, and reliability. Areas of interest include but are not limited to the following:

• Rapidly manufacture Vacuum Insulated Glazings (VIGs), using unconventional edge sealing materials and processes, innovative methods to create or place spacers, and efficient establishment of the required vacuum; and
• Dramatically reduce the time required to manufacture aerogels in the required thicknesses while maintaining acceptable levels of clarity and haze.

The GLASING program seeks to overcome technology barriers to developing high performance IGUs suitable for new and retrofit markets that are cost competitive with double-pane IGUs with low-emissivity (low-e) coating and argon fill. The program encourages the formation of multidisciplinary teams with expertise in relevant areas such as materials, simulation, thermal analysis, manufacturing, industrial engineering, techno-economic analysis, reliability, chemistry, and other fields. Each team will develop 0.6 m by 0.6 m IGU prototypes with whole-window R-values exceeding R-10. Technical designs and processes developed by teams will be evaluated by industrial equipment designers to ensure commercialization viability and the ability to scale to mass manufacturing. Thermal, optical, and durability testing of the IGU prototypes will be performed by third-party certifiers.

The goal of DC-GRIDS is to enable the rapid expansion of the grid’s capacity by making HVDC transmission systems cost-comparable with conventional AC technology. This will lead to higher grid resiliency, energy availability, performance, and lower deployment time (if HVDC can use the existing overhead and underground transmission infrastructure rights-of-way). The program will also enable true multi-directional power routing with flexible interconnections between new and existing AC and direct current (DC) lines, making integration of sustainable energy sources faster and easier.

This program will focus on two technical categories:

1. Category A: Novel submodules and modular high-voltage power electronic valves; and
2. Category B: Technologies that enable highly compact multi-terminal converter stations.
   

Technological breakthroughs under Category A will enable the availability of low-cost, vendor-agnostic valves that can be plug-and-play-ready and able to flexibly operate together in the same HVDC converter station. This would lead to a competitive economy that will drive down the cost of valves, and consequently converters, enabling their wider deployment. Technologies under Category B will make conversion of existing AC substations into HVDC converter stations possible. By realizing a higher-capacity grid where DC and AC transmission operates in a highly coordinated fashion, DC-GRIDS can lead to higher grid resiliency and significantly improved flexibility when integrating new electricity sources (e.g., offshore wind) onto the U.S. grid.

The goal of DC-GRIDS is to enable the rapid expansion of the grid’s capacity by making HVDC transmission systems cost-comparable with conventional AC technology. This will lead to higher grid resiliency, energy availability, performance, and lower deployment time (if HVDC can use the existing overhead and underground transmission infrastructure rights-of-way). The program will also enable true multi-directional power routing with flexible interconnections between new and existing AC and direct current (DC) lines, making integration of sustainable energy sources faster and easier.

This program will focus on two technical categories:

1. Category A: Novel submodules and modular high-voltage power electronic valves; and
2. Category B: Technologies that enable highly compact multi-terminal converter stations.
   

Technological breakthroughs under Category A will enable the availability of low-cost, vendor-agnostic valves that can be plug-and-play-ready and able to flexibly operate together in the same HVDC converter station. This would lead to a competitive economy that will drive down the cost of valves, and consequently converters, enabling their wider deployment. Technologies under Category B will make conversion of existing AC substations into HVDC converter stations possible. By realizing a higher-capacity grid where DC and AC transmission operates in a highly coordinated fashion, DC-GRIDS can lead to higher grid resiliency and significantly improved flexibility when integrating new electricity sources (e.g., offshore wind) onto the U.S. grid.

The Catalytic Application Testing for Accelerated Learning Chemistries via High-throughput Experimentation and Modeling Efficiently (CATALCHEM-E) program aims to disrupt and accelerate the design and development cycle for heterogeneous catalyst R&D workflows. The program will span from rational material discovery to synthesis and final reactor testing. These novel workflows will be developed by coupling the latest advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) with high-throughput experimentation (HTE) to verifiably complete 10–15 years of traditional catalysis R&D work within 12–18 months, thus achieving more than a ten-time acceleration in the catalyst development cycle. The program will then use these new tools to discover and optimize catalytic chemistries relevant to ARPA-E’s goals. These new chemistries will ultimately help advance the objective of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Innovations developed under the CATALCHEM-E program will involve:

Future refinery relevant or other next-generation feedstocks such as hydrogen (H₂), nitrogen (N₂), oxygen (O₂), water (H₂O), carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), ammonia (NH₃), methanol (MeOH), ethanol (EtOH), bio-intermediates (C_xH_yO_z), waste plastics, and triglycerides (TAGs); and

Products like ethylene (C₂⁼) and propylene (C₃⁼) as low carbon monomers, and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), diesel, and syngas as distillate range hydrocarbons.

The Catalytic Application Testing for Accelerated Learning Chemistries via High-throughput Experimentation and Modeling Efficiently SBIR/STTR (CATALCHEM-E SBIR/STTR) program aims to disrupt and accelerate the design and development cycle for heterogeneous catalyst R&D workflows. The program will span from rational material discovery to synthesis and final reactor testing. These novel workflows will be developed by coupling the latest advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) with high-throughput experimentation (HTE) to verifiably complete 10–15 years of traditional catalysis R&D work within 12–18 months, thus achieving more than a ten-time acceleration in the catalyst development cycle. The program will then use these new tools to discover and optimize catalytic chemistries relevant to ARPA-E’s goals. These new chemistries will ultimately help advance the objective of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Innovations developed under the CATALCHEM-E program will involve:

Future refinery relevant or other next-generation feedstocks such as hydrogen (H₂), nitrogen (N₂), oxygen (O₂), water (H₂O), carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), ammonia (NH₃), methanol (MeOH), ethanol (EtOH), bio-intermediates (C_xH_yO_z), waste plastics, and triglycerides (TAGs); and

Products like ethylene (C₂⁼) and propylene (C₃⁼) as low carbon monomers, and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), diesel, and syngas as distillate range hydrocarbons.

The RECOVER program seeks to develop technologies to concentrate and recover high value energy materials from aqueous waste streams. Priority high value energy materials for the program are ammonia and metals considered critical to energy and diversifying the U.S. supply chain. Ammonia is produced using the Haber-Bosch process with a high energy and greenhouse gas penalty, and much of this ammonia ends up in municipal and animal waste streams where it is destroyed without recovery. Critical metals are obtained from ore mining and processing and are almost entirely sourced from overseas; their use in infrastructure and military technologies makes their supply a matter of national concern. Produced water and mining waste streams have sufficient amounts of key critical metals to displace all or most of U.S. imports.

The RECOVER program will enable: i) the replacement of 50% of conventional ammonia supplies, and all or partial critical metals imports, ii) the valorization of multiple high value energy materials from an aqueous waste stream, iii) the reduction of energy demands and CO₂-equivalent (CO₂eq) emissions for ammonia and critical metals procurement, and iv) the recovery of market-valuable products at competitive prices. Recovery of market-valuable products will create new revenue sources for aqueous waste stream processors, thereby reducing net costs and contributing to improved water treatment outcomes.

Relevant waste stream targets are municipal or animal feedlot waste streams, produced water waste streams, and mining waste streams. New technology development efforts under the RECOVER program include three technical categories: 1) new materials, 2) process development and derisking, and 3) process integration. Capable technologies will be energy efficient, highly selective, and durable over extended use. Processes will involve limited sequential steps, be scalable, and be adaptable to existing or new wastewater facilities.

The Realize Energy-rich Compound Opportunities Valorizing Extraction from Refuse waters (RECOVER) program seeks to develop technologies to concentrate and recover high value energy materials from aqueous waste streams. Priority high value energy materials for the program are ammonia and metals considered critical to energy and diversifying the U.S. supply chain. Ammonia is produced using the Haber-Bosch process with a high energy and greenhouse gas penalty, and much of this ammonia ends up in municipal and animal waste streams where it is destroyed without recovery. Critical metals are obtained from ore mining and processing and are almost entirely sourced from overseas; their use in infrastructure and military technologies makes their supply a matter of national concern. Produced water and mining waste streams have sufficient amounts of key critical metals to displace all or most of U.S. imports.

The RECOVER program will enable: i) the replacement of 50% of conventional ammonia supplies, and all or partial critical metals imports, ii) the valorization of multiple high value energy materials from an aqueous waste stream, iii) the reduction of energy demands and CO₂-equivalent (CO₂eq) emissions for ammonia and critical metals procurement, and iv) the recovery of market-valuable products at competitive prices. Recovery of market-valuable products will create new revenue sources for aqueous waste stream processors, thereby reducing net costs and contributing to improved water treatment outcomes.

Relevant waste stream targets are municipal or animal feedlot waste streams, produced water waste streams, and mining waste streams. New technology development efforts under the RECOVER program include three technical categories: 1) new materials, 2) process development and derisking, and 3) process integration. Capable technologies will be energy efficient, highly selective, and durable over extended use. Processes will involve limited sequential steps, be scalable, and be adaptable to existing or new wastewater facilities.

The purpose of this RFI is to solicit input for a potential ARPA-E program focused on the development of the next generation of magnetic materials. The goal for this potential program is the evaluation of technologies capable of substantially improving the properties of magnets in energy systems, such as: (1) increasing the magnetic energy density in permanent magnets by a factor of two or (2) increasing the magnetic strength of any magnet to 3 Tesla.

The potential uses for these improved materials for energy applications include wind turbines and traction motors among others.

Areas Not of Interest for Responses to this RFI:

This potential program is focused on increasing the magnetic energy density in permanent magnets. Approaches not of interest include:

• Processing changes to already commercialized magnet materials;
• Incremental changes to already commercialized magnet materials; and
• Electromagnets.

RFI Guidelines:

Note that the information you provide will be used by ARPA-E solely for program planning, without attribution. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS RFI DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FUNDING OPPORTUNITY. NO FUNDING OPPORTUNITY EXISTS AT THIS TIME.

The purpose of this RFI is solely to solicit input for ARPA-E’s consideration to inform the possible formulation of future research programs. ARPA-E will not provide funding or compensation for any information submitted in response to this RFI, and ARPA-E may use information submitted to this RFI without any attribution to the source. This RFI provides the broad research community with an opportunity to contribute views and opinions.

No material submitted for review will be returned and there will be no formal or informal debriefing concerning the review of any submitted material. ARPA-E may contact respondents to request clarification or seek additional information relevant to this RFI. All responses provided will be considered, but ARPA-E will not respond to individual submissions or publish publicly a compendium of responses. Respondents shall not include any information in the response to this RFI that could be considered proprietary or confidential.

Responses to this RFI should be submitted in PDF format to the email address ARPA-E-RFI@hq.doe.gov by 5:00 PM Eastern Time on January 7, 2025.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) has issued Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) SCALEUP Ready to support the scaling of promising ARPA-E-funded technologies into early commercial products.

The purpose of this announcement is to facilitate collaboration among potential performing teams to respond to the SCALEUP Ready NOFO. The NOFO provides specific program goals, technical metrics, and selection criteria. NOFO terms are controlling.

The SCALEUP Ready program provides a vital mechanism for the support of innovative energy research and development (R&D) that complements ARPA-E’s primary focus on early-stage transformational energy technologies that still require proof of concept. ARPA-E intends for this NOFO to remain open until closed or modified. Applications will be accepted at any time while this NOFO remains open.

ARPA-E’s mission is to develop and deploy transformational energy technologies in support of U.S. national security and economic competitiveness goals. ARPA-E funds the R&D of energy technologies that, among other goals, reduce imports of energy from foreign sources; reduce energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; and improve the energy efficiency of all economic sectors. ARPA-E’s authorizing statute directs the Agency to ensure that the U.S. maintains a lead in developing advanced energy technologies through accelerating transformational technological advances that industry by itself is not likely to undertake because of technical and financial uncertainty.

Technologies that achieve substantial technical advancement under ARPA-E support may still face significant technical and commercial challenges upon completion of an award's funding period, and thus are at risk of being stranded in their development path once ARPA-E funding ends. Experience across ARPA-E’s diverse energy portfolios, and input from a wide range of investors and industry stakeholders, indicate that pre-commercial scaling projects are critical to establish practical performance and cost parameters. These pre-commercial scaling projects aim to 1) translate the performance achieved at bench scale to commercially scalable versions of the technology, 2) integrate the technology with broader systems, 3) provide extended performance data, and 4) validate the manufacturability and reliability of new energy technologies. Successful scaling projects should enable industry stakeholders to justify the substantial commitments of financial resources, personnel, manufacturing facilities, and materials necessary to subsequently deploy the technologies at a commercial scale.

The SCALEUP Ready program seeks to scale the most promising technologies previously funded by ARPA-E. The possibility of ARPA-E funded technologies becoming stranded along their development pathways leaves substantial intellectual property developed with American taxpayer dollars vulnerable to adoption by foreign competitors, who capture it for continued development and economic benefit overseas. This harms national competitiveness, as U.S. industries often fall behind on the development, scaling, and manufacturing of technologies necessary to compete in rapidly evolving global energy markets. Thus, projects selected for the program will meet ARPA-E’s statutory goals by “accelerating transformational technological advances in areas that industry by itself is not likely to undertake because of technical and financial uncertainty.”

ARPA-E strongly encourages different organizations with outstanding entrepreneurial scientists and engineers along with commercialization and financial entities across diverse sectors to participate in this program. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates the achievement of scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible.

ARPA-E is compiling a Teaming Partner List for SCALEUP Ready as an optional tool that applicants may choose to utilize to facilitate the formation of new project teams and identify possible collaborations. Teaming Partners include organizations and individuals who can offer expertise, facilities, or other complementary resources toward a potential ARPA-E project. The teaming list includes fields for potential partners’ capabilities and areas of interest, understanding that expertise in one field can often be applied successfully to another field.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. ARPA-E intends to make the Teaming Partner List available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal, starting in October 2024. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically as long as the NOFO remains open to reflect the addition of new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on the Teaming Partner List should complete all required fields in the following link: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/TeamingPartners.aspx. Required information includes the following: Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

In the “Brief Description of Capabilities” field, include the following details:

• Specify whether your organization is interested in participating in a potential project as a project team lead or partner.
• Describe the types of partners you are seeking to assemble for a project team if interested in participating as a project lead.
• Describe the role(s) your organization can fill if interested in participating as a partner. Roles may include but are not limited to potential customers, end-users, suppliers, strategic investors, manufacturers, distributors, or financial partners. Additionally, provide details on the specific capabilities offered.

By submitting a response to this Teaming Partner List, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify themselves for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted via email or other means will not be considered. Participation in and utilization of this list is completely voluntary. ARPA-E will not identify or facilitate connections through the teaming list and participation in the list has no bearing whatsoever on the evaluation of applications submitted to the NOFO.

This notice does not constitute a NOFO. Applicants must refer to the SCALEUP Ready NOFO, issued on October 2, 2024, for instructions on applying and for the terms and conditions of funding. Questions about the NOFO should be directed to ARPA-E-CO@hq.doe.gov.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to support the development of new technologies to recover high energy-value materials from wastewater to reduce reliance on foreign imports, domestic energy demands, and greenhouse gas emissions associated with conventional sourcing and waste stream treatment. The purpose of this announcement is to facilitate the formation of new project teams to respond to a potential future NOFO. Any NOFO issued in the future would provide specific program goals, technical metrics, and selection criteria. If there are any inconsistencies between this announcement and the potential NOFO, the NOFO language would be controlling.

The anticipated goal of the program is to develop technology to recover multiple critical minerals and/or ammonia-based products from domestic wastewater sources. Critical minerals of highest interest are those designated by the Department of Energy as the 12 most energy and supply-chain relevant metals, including lithium, cobalt, and rare-earth elements. Ammonia-based products include fertilizers, other high-value nitrogen products, and hydrogen from ammonia oxidation. Wastewater is broadly defined and may include (but is not limited to) municipal, livestock, industrial, and mining waste streams. Capable technologies for recovery of high energy-value ammonia and critical minerals will be energy efficient, highly selective, and durable over extended use. Preferable processes will be continuous, involve few sequential steps, easily adaptable to existing or new wastewater facilities, and scalable (e.g., modular).

Several technical categories are foreseen to achieve this objective, including:

1. New functional-materials development to address the difficulty of separating and concentrating target ions of similar size, charge, redox potential, and solubility within the complex and harsh conditions of a target wastewater matrix;
2. Process derisking to enable continuous or repeated cycles of efficient recovery of a market-valuable product in minimal steps (again within the complex and harsh conditions of a target wastewater matrix); and
3. Process integration to ensure technologies are capable of energy-efficient and continuous recovery of market-valuable product in a real wastewater matrix, and that the process is scalable to anticipated wastewater flow rates.

For all categories, the final recovered products will need to include at least two targeted high energy-value materials, have greater than 90% recovery efficiency, and be commercially viable in the U.S. market.

Expertise in the following areas may be useful in responding to the potential NOFO:

• Organic synthesis, chelation, and/or redox chemistries
• Water/wastewater chemistry
• Synthetic/molecular biology
• Biologically-inspired separations
• Electrochemical separations
• Ion exchange separations
• Membrane separations
• Process engineering
• Wastewater treatment, operation, and/or management
• Techno-economic assessment

ARPA-E held a workshop on this topic in August 2024. Information on this workshop can be found at https://arpa-e.energy.gov/events/ammonia-critical-minerals-recovery-workshop.

ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to submit their information to form new project teams. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates the achievement of scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. The Teaming Partner List will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal, starting in October 2024. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically until the close of the Full Application period to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields in the form at the following link: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx. Required information includes the following: Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting a response to this Notice, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to other email addresses or by other means will not be considered. This list is completely voluntarily to participate in and utilize. ARPA-E will not identify or facilitate connections through the Teaming Partner List and participation in the list has no bearing whatsoever on the evaluation of applications submitted to the potential NOFO.

This Notice does not constitute a NOFO. No NOFO exists at this time. Applicants must refer to the NOFO, expected to be issued by November 2024, for instructions on submitting an application and for details on how projects will be funded.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to support the development of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled, accelerated research and development (R&D) workflows for energy-relevant, heterogeneous, thermochemical, and electrochemical catalysts. The purpose of this announcement is to facilitate the formation of new, multi-disciplinary project teams to respond to a potential future NOFO. Any NOFO issued in the future would provide specific program goals, technical metrics, and selection criteria. If there are any inconsistencies between this announcement and the potential NOFO, the NOFO language would be controlling.

This potential NOFO would focus on:

• Innovations in high-throughput catalyst design experimental methods and state-of-the-art AI and machine learning (ML) algorithms and models; and
• Integration of these innovations into catalysis R&D workflows to automate and accelerate the development of heterogeneous catalysts.

These technology developments would significantly contribute toward ARPA-E’s statutory goals by improving energy efficiency, reducing energy-related emissions through new feedstocks, and reducing imports associated with critical materials.

The anticipated goals of the potential program include the following:

• Development of AI-enabled “closed-loop” or other potentially disruptive workflows to accelerate the design and development cycle for chemistries relevant to ARPA-E’s mission, which will ultimately help advance the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 (e.g., “future refinery relevant” or other next generation feedstocks and products);
• Synthesis of new “drop-in” manufacturable technical catalysts in engineered forms at kilogram scale for thermochemical or electrochemical reactor systems, as well as evaluation of these technical catalysts for performance under realistic, industrial conditions; and
• Generation of AI-ready databases by combining and pre-processing high-quality, multi-scale, multi-modal data as generated and gathered from synthesis, characterization, and performance testing tasks at the ab initio, as well as at the research and technical catalyst levels.

The potential program is expected to consist of a three-year performance period. It is anticipated that the program will transform and disrupt traditional catalysis R&D workflows by tightly coupling state-of-the-art advances in hardware for high-throughput catalyst design experimental methods with modern software tools and techniques in AI/ML, data science, and data engineering such that an equivalent 10 – 15 years of traditional catalysis R&D work can be verifiably completed (through rediscovery) within 12 – 18 months, effectively demonstrating a more than 10x acceleration in the catalyst development cycle. Further impact will be realized by utilizing these acceleration methods for novel catalyst-reaction discovery and co-design. The potential NOFO encourages the development of closed-loop and other promising, automated workflow topologies that enable inverse design of heterogenous catalysts.

Teams composed of experts in the following areas may be useful in responding to the potential NOFO (see attached document for more detail on each category):

• Materials acceleration and high-throughput experimentation (HTE) (hardware and software)
• AI/ML
• Catalysis
• Industrial catalysis and manufacturing

Successful teams are likely to include subject matter experts from all identified areas. Although a single person may be able to fill more than one of these roles, a complete set of experts is unlikely to exist within any single organization. Furthermore, due to timing and resource constraints typical of ARPA-E programs, it is generally recommended that any applicant project team would need to secure access to existing HTE hardware.

ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. The Teaming Partner List will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal, starting in October 2024. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically until the close of the Full Application period to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields in the form found at the following link: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx. Required information includes the following: Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting your information to this Teaming Partner List, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to other email addresses or by other means will not be considered. Participation in and utilization of this list is completely voluntary. ARPA-E will not identify or facilitate connections through the list and participation in the list has no bearing whatsoever on the evaluation of applications submitted to the potential funding opportunity.

This list does not constitute a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). A NOFO does not exist at this time. Applicants must refer to the funding opportunity, expected to be issued by November 2024, for instructions on applying and for details on how projects will be funded.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) entitled Disruptive DC Converters for Grid Resilient Infrastructure to Deliver Sustainable energy (DC-GRIDS) to target transformative technologies that would enable a multi-terminal high-voltage direct current transmission (MT-HVDC) grid. This MT-HVDC grid would accelerate adoption of offshore power transmission, conversion of high voltage alternating current (HVAC) corridors to HVDC, and interconnection of the three U.S. electrical grids to rapidly expand grid capacity while improving resiliency and performance. The purpose of this Teaming Partner List announcement is to facilitate the formation of new project teams to respond to the potential NOFO. Any NOFO issued in the future would provide specific program goals, technical metrics, and selection criteria. If there are any inconsistencies between this announcement and the potential NOFO, the NOFO language would be controlling.

Specifically, this program would focus on:

• Novel submodules and modular high-voltage power electronic valves; and
• Technologies that enable highly compact multi-terminal converter stations.

The focus on novel high-voltage power electronic valves is to enable lower-cost, vendor-agnostic, and mass-produced kilovolt-level (kV) submodules and greater than 30 kV-rated modular converter valves with standardized interoperability and redundancy. This will enable low-cost and compact multi-terminal converter stations.

Similarly, the focus on MT-HVDC converter station technology is to develop standardized, highly compact, vendor-agnostic, lower-cost stations enabling high grid resiliency, capacity release of the existing grid, and significantly improved flexibility and operational performance. The goal is to enable conversion of existing AC substations into HVDC converter stations for a networked DC grid via a 65% footprint reduction from the conventional HVDC stations. Additionally, an 80% volume reduction of offshore converter stations is required to achieve lower-cost and higher-speed offshore wind technology deployment. This ambitious effort to lower costs, standardize the MT-HVDC designs, and reduce the size of converter stations will fast-track transmission build-out on existing infrastructure and rights-of-way.

Furthermore, the program would aim to develop high-fidelity electromagnetic transient models of submodules, valves, HVDC converters, and associated components to aid real-time simulations and emulations and multi-terminal AC and DC mixed grid operation. The fidelity of certain models would be validated with hardware developed under this potential future program.

ARPA-E held a workshop on this topic in June 2024. Information on this workshop can be found at https://arpa-e.energy.gov/events/macro-electronic-multi-terminal-grid-workshop.

ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams, particularly with expertise in power electronics and other related fields. Partnership with system integrators, equipment vendors, developers, and utilities and/or independent system operators (ISOs) is expected. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. The Teaming Partner List will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal, starting in October 2024. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically until the close of the Full Application period to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields in the following form: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx. Required information includes Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting your information to this Teaming Partner List, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to other email addresses or by other means will not be considered. Participation in and utilization of this list is completely voluntary. ARPA-E will not identify or facilitate connections through the list and participation in the list has no bearing whatsoever on the evaluation of applications submitted to the potential funding opportunity.

This list does not constitute a NOFO. A NOFO does not exist at this time. Applicants must refer to the NOFO, expected to be issued by November 2024, for instructions on applying and for details on how projects will be funded.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to support the development of quantum computing technologies aimed at accelerating energy innovation. This potential FOA would focus on quantum computing for advances in chemistry and materials that significantly address ARPA-E mission areas, such as improving energy efficiency and reducing energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of this announcement is to facilitate the formation of new project teams to respond to a potential future FOA. Any FOA issued in the future would provide specific program goals, technical metrics, and selection criteria. FOA terms would be controlling.

The anticipated goals of the program include developing scalable quantum algorithms for chemistry and materials simulations. The program is expected to culminate in a three-year performance period, resulting in transformative quantum applications with disruptive performance increases compared to classical calculations in metrics such as speed or accuracy. The FOA is expected to require that performance be validated on quantum hardware, either outperforming the classical state-of-the-art or showing a clear path to do so in a scalable manner.

Expertise in the following areas may be useful in responding to the potential FOA:

• Chemistry and Materials Applications: Teams must plan to solve an impactful chemistry or materials problem in the energy space and quantify the relevance to ARPA-E's mission. Therefore, expertise in the specific application in materials science or chemistry may be useful to ensure that the problem is indeed of interest to that field, that solving it would represent a major—not incremental—advance in the field, and that the problem is unlikely to be solved by another approach.
• Classical High-Performance Computing: Experts in classical computational methods used to study chemistry and materials may be useful to ensure that quantum results are compared to and validated against the best available classical methods.
• Quantum Algorithms and Software Engineering: Experts in the design of quantum algorithms, specifically those relevant to chemistry and materials science, may be useful to address the core goals of the potential FOA.
• Quantum Compilation, Embedding, and Error-Correction: Specialists in optimizing circuits and error-correction protocols may be useful to optimize higher-level algorithms for maximum performance on the specific quantum hardware.
• Quantum Hardware: It may be useful to include experts in the specific qubits and architecture that will be used to solve the problem and the likely state of hardware by the end of the period of performance.

Successful teams are likely to include experts from all identified areas of expertise in order to be able to design an approach that leverages quantum computing hardware to solve a practical problem related to ARPA-E’s mission in energy. Although a single person may be able to fill more than one of these expert roles, a complete set of experts is unlikely to exist within any single organization. We anticipate effective teaming will be critical for project success.

As a general matter, ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. The Teaming Partner List will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal, starting in August 2024. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically until the close of the Full Application period to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields in the following link: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx. Required information includes the following: Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting a response to this Notice, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to other email addresses or by other means will not be considered. Participation in and utilization of this list is completely voluntary. ARPA-E will not identify or facilitate connections through the teaming list and participation in the list has no bearing whatsoever on the evaluation of applications submitted to the potential FOA.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a funding opportunity to support the development of high performance insulated glass units (IGUs). The purpose of this announcement is to facilitate the formation of new project teams to respond to a potential funding opportunity. Any funding opportunity issued in the future would provide specific program goals, technical metrics, and selection criteria. Funding opportunity terms would be controlling.

The anticipated three-year program is expected to culminate in highly insulating, low-cost, retrofittable IGUs that can be integrated into a sash and frame. Although the sash and frame are important components of the window, they are out of the scope of this anticipated program. Vacuum insulated glazings and aerogel-based IGUs are two possible technologies that could meet the goals of the potential program, though other innovative solutions meeting the program targets would be considered. ARPA-E anticipates the teams will execute analytical, computational, design, and prototype efforts to reduce key risks associated with their technology during the first half of the performance period. Validation of thermal performance and durability would occur at the end of this period. The second half of the performance period would focus on further development of the manufacturing processes and validating their scalability for mass manufacture.

As a general matter, ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

ARPA-E strongly encourages the formation of interdisciplinary teams to overcome technology barriers to develop high performance IGUs suitable for the retrofit market that are cost-competitive with double-pane low-emissivity IGUs with argon fill. Successful teams are likely to incorporate expertise in relevant areas such as materials, simulation, thermal analysis, manufacturing, industrial engineering, technoeconomic analysis, reliability, chemistry, and other fields. The technical designs and processes developed by the teams will be evaluated by industrial equipment designers to ensure viable paths to commercialization. Thermal, optical, and durability testing will be performed by third-party certifiers.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. The Teaming Partner List will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE, ARPA-E’s online application portal, starting in September 2024. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically until the close of the Full Application period to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields in the following form: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx.

Required information includes Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting a response to this notice, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to other email addresses or by other means will not be considered. Participation in and utilization of this list is completely voluntary. ARPA-E will not identify or facilitate connections through the list and participation in the list has no bearing whatsoever on the evaluation of applications submitted to the potential funding opportunity.

This notice does not constitute a funding opportunity. No funding opportunity exists at this time. Applicants must refer to the funding opportunity, expected to be issued by November 2024, for instructions on applying and for the terms and conditions of funding.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to support research and development of technologies that would enable a scaled, offshore seaweed industry, creating a gigaton-scale supply of sustainable hydrocarbons without significant disruption of existing industries and no additional requirements for land, fresh water, or artificial fertilizer. Specifically, this NOFO would fund the development of new sensor, ocean engineering, and market-enabling technologies.

The purpose of this Teaming Partner List announcement is to facilitate the formation of new project teams to respond to the potential NOFO. Any NOFO issued in the future would provide specific program goals, technical metrics, and selection criteria. If there are any inconsistencies between this announcement and the potential NOFO, the NOFO language would be controlling.

The anticipated goals of the program are:

• To reduce the cost of seaweed biomass cultivation by a factor of four when scaled, from the low thousands today to $120-275 per Dry Metric Ton (DMT, 10% moisture) depending on the cultivated species;
• To develop new, energy-centric, million-ton-scale markets in the United States; and
• To increase the scale of the U.S.-based seaweed cultivation industry by three orders of magnitude, from one thousand to one million tons per year wet harvest through these new markets.
  

The NOFO would focus on technology development in three categories to achieve these objectives:

1. Pioneering Smart Aqua Farms: New sensors and models to enable a complete, real-time, remote, and persistent understanding of farm state offshore. Parameters of interest include in-situ quantification of biomass growth rates and absolute quantities, nitrate and sugar content/type, biofouling and herbivory impacts, and structural loading. Such sensing capabilities will inform both dynamically updated structural and biological models that will curtail manual inspection, enable autonomy, enhance yield, enhance worker safety, and protect operational assets.
2. Creating Offshore Scale:
   1. Depth cycling: Hardware and control systems to enable the crop to periodically access optimal environments below nutriclines and thermoclines; and
   2. Dewatering: Methods of seaweed dewatering at sea to improve the economics of biomass transport and extend shelf life.
3. Enabling Megaton Markets:
   1. Biostimulant characterization: The discovery of biostimulant formulations and mechanisms, and investigation of their applicability to bioenergy row crops as a direct product line; and
   2. Other new and innovative approaches that harness the potential of a scaled seaweed production process to address U.S. energy needs.

Expertise in the following areas may be useful in responding to the potential NOFO:

• Deep water engineering, modeling, energy harvesting
• Automation and offshore robotic systems
• Seaweed cultivation, optimization, and processing
• Analytical biochemistry
• Biological/biochemical sensing
• Optical, electromagnetic, and acoustic sensing of biological phenomena
• Agricultural biochemistry
• Plant and microbial biology
• Uncrewed ocean surface vehicles and platforms
• Thermal and non-thermal water removal
• Technoeconomic and life-cycle analysis

ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to submit their information to form new project teams. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates the achievement of scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible. Furthermore, teaming arrangements with researchers from the Republic of Korea may be strongly encouraged under this program.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. The Teaming Partner List will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal, starting in December 2024. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically until the close of the Full Application period to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields in the following form: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx. Required information includes Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting your information to this Teaming Partner List, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to email addresses or by other means will not be considered. Participation in and utilization of this list is completely voluntary. ARPA-E will not identify or facilitate connections through the Teaming Partner List and participation in the list has no bearing whatsoever on the evaluation of applications submitted to the potential funding opportunity.

This list does not constitute a NOFO. A NOFO does not exist at this time. Applicants must refer to the NOFO, expected to be issued by December 2024, for instructions on applying and for details on how projects will be funded.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to support the development of technologies aimed at accelerating genetic engineering for bioenergy crops. This potential NOFO would focus on bioenergy crops that significantly address ARPA-E mission areas, such as decreasing energy imports and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as strengthening U.S. leadership in developing and deploying energy technologies. The purpose of this Teaming Partner List announcement is to facilitate the formation of new project teams to respond to the potential NOFO. Any NOFO issued in the future would provide specific program goals, technical metrics, and selection criteria. If there are any inconsistencies between this announcement and the potential NOFO, the NOFO language would be controlling.

The anticipated goals of the program include developing technologies to:

1. Accelerate the efficiency and rate of production of engineered plants;
2. Reduce the genotype dependence of genetic engineering techniques; and
3. Develop innovative biocontainment strategies for engineered plants.

Any NOFO issued in the future would be expected to support projects with a three-year performance period, transforming the genetic engineering of bioenergy crops from a resource-intensive craft into a routine procedure. The NOFO is expected to require that techniques be demonstrated in bioenergy crops and go beyond incremental improvements to transformation and tissue culture.

Expertise in the following areas may be useful in responding to the potential NOFO:

• Design of transformation vectors, including non-traditional vectors such as viruses, nanoparticles, and other modalities;
• Tissue-culture-free techniques for germline transformation, including meristem transformation and floral dip;
• Molecular tools for DNA modification, including but not limited to CRISPR systems, transposases, and recombinases;
• Developmental regulators/morphogenic genes;
• Plant genetics;
• Microbiology or pant-pathogen interactions;
• Synthetic biology and drug design, including techniques from mammalian systems that can be translated to bioenergy crops;
• Materials capable of targeted interactions with plant cells or nucleic acids;
• Mechanical and electrical engineering and robotics; and
• Computer science/machine learning/artificial intelligence/computer vision.

Successful teams are likely to include experts from several of these fields, including those who can leverage recent advances in biotechnology outside of the traditional plant sciences.

ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. The Teaming Partner List will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal, starting in December 2024. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically until the close of the Full Application period to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields in the following form: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx. Required information includes Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting your information to this Teaming Partner List, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to email addresses or by other means will not be considered. Participation in and utilization of this list is completely voluntary. ARPA-E will not identify or facilitate connections through the Teaming Partner List and participation in the list has no bearing whatsoever on the evaluation of applications submitted to the potential funding opportunity.

This list does not constitute a NOFO. A NOFO does not exist at this time. Applicants must refer to the NOFO, expected to be issued by January 2025, for instructions on applying and for details on how projects will be funded.