The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) issued a $23 million funding opportunity announcement (FOA) that will drive innovation to decarbonize the entire life cycle of Water Resource Recovery Facilities (WRRFs). These facilities, which treat wastewater from public water systems, are among the country’s largest industrial electricity users with full lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on par with direct emissions from the food and beverage industry— one of the largest GHG-emitting industries in the United States. This FOA will accelerate research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) of technologies to lower GHG emissions from WRRFs to help decarbonize our nation’s water treatment sector and move the U.S. closer to a net-zero economy by 2050.

Topic Areas

• Decarbonization of WRRF Unit Processes: This topic will focus on projects to reduce GHG emissions from various unit processes within WRRFs while maintaining or decreasing operating costs. Proposed projects must achieve a 50% reduction in emissions from key processes without increasing total WRRF operating costs.
• Reducing overall greenhouse GHG emissions from WRRFs: This topic will focus on projects to reduce GHG emissions and treatment costs for WRRFs at larger scales and higher levels of technological readiness. Proposed projects must achieve a 25% reduction in emissions without increasing operating costs beyond baseline operations of an entire facility.