This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is for the Energy Future Grants (EFG), issued by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of State and Community Energy Programs (SCEP). In accordance with Congressional direction, DOE will provide financial and technical assistance to support innovative – novel or early action – clean energy planning to benefit disadvantaged communities.

Energy Future Grants provides $37 million total in financial assistance in two phases to advance:

• Partnerships: Create multijurisdictional partnerships between local, tribal, and/or state governments, with a goal of at least 3-4 partners per team.
• Communities: Develop deployment-focused clean energy plans in the transportation, building, and/or power sectors to meet community needs.
• Innovation: Prioritize innovative (novel or early action) approaches that maximize access to affordable clean energy across sectors, markets, and geographies.

DOE will award $37 million in funding in two phases.

• Phase 1: $27 million over 12-18 months in this funding opportunity.
• Phase 2: $10M over 2 years in a future funding opportunity (Successful Phase 1 awardees will compete for awards of up to $1 million).

Eligible Applicants:

Entities that may apply to this FOA are local governments, states, territories, and tribes. Applicants are encouraged to partner as multijurisdictional teams and with community-based organizations (CBOs), academia, utilities, and/or non-profit entities.

The following entities are eligible to apply as prime applicants:

• States/territories, local governmental entities, and tribal nations. It is suggested that applicants include at least 3-4 or more of these governmental partners (e.g., a state and three cities in the states, several cities in a region, and a city and multiple tribes, etc.).

The following entities are eligible subrecipients:

• Non-profit entities including CBOs.
• Institutions of higher education, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Minority Serving Institutions, Hispanic Serving Institutions, tribal colleges, community colleges, and think tanks.
• Local or regional planning organizations.
• Utilities including investor-owned, cooperative/public power, and municipal as well as third-party or independent power providers.
• For-profit entities such as architecture, engineering, or consultants.

Key Benefits and Metrics:

• Reduced energy burden and poverty, measured through metrics such as improvement in energy burden from a baseline established prior to project implementation.
• Increased energy access in disadvantaged communities, measured by reduction of homes or businesses able to access to affordable, clean electricity in disadvantaged communities.
• Increased economic development, measured in ongoing permanent jobs created in the community, improved wages and benefits, workforce training programs created or maintained, or other economic effects related to clean energy production and distribution.
• Improved benefit to health public health, measured through positive changes in metrics such as air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and water quality.
• Increased housing affordability, measured by the housing price-to-income, expenditure-to-income in each community, or other indicators of housing affordability.

Strategic Goals

The strategic goals for the EFG FOA are to:

• Establish collaborative and sustainable partnerships between local, tribal, and/or state governments, with a goal of at least 3-4 partners per applicant team.
• Develop innovative deployment-focused clean energy plans in and across the transportation, power, and/or building sectors.
• Prioritize plans that result in innovative (novel or early action) program designs that maximize energy affordability and provide other benefits of clean energy including economic development and jobs, housing affordability, health, mobility, and energy access.

Ensure all plans have deployment strategies that benefit disadvantaged communities.

Topic Areas

This FOA will support local, state, and tribal governments in developing and implementing plans that break new ground in three topic areas: transportation, power sector, and buildings. Awardees are encouraged to think across these sectoral silos and propose multi-sectoral or integrated ideas to improve energy affordability and access and support good jobs and other economic benefits.

• Topic Area 1 – Transportation: Proposals in this area should include planning approaches for reducing the energy intensity or greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector, with a focus on efforts to advance projects that benefit infrastructure, mobility, and net zero fuels. Innovative actions may include efforts to support on-and-off-road technology adoption and fuel use, including freight and aviation fleets. Teams should consider including US DOE Clean Cities Coalitions as partners.
• Topic Area 2 – Power Sector: Scalable innovations in the power sector including distributed energy delivery models that emphasize affordability and demand flexibility (e.g., pricing, rates, or tariffs). Other ideas include fuel switching to net zero carbon fuels, electrification, microgrids, supply chain and/or procurement strategies that support economic, health, and job benefits in disadvantaged communities. Teams should consider utilities or regulatory agencies as partners.
• Topic Area 3 – Buildings: Innovative strategies for creating net zero commercial and residential buildings, including opportunities in the multi-family sector or at community facilities. Approaches include the adoption of building engineering, construction, and retrofit programs that account for occupant behavior, technology integration, and procurement of energy efficient material or the wider use of performance standards to drive outcomes (electrification, decarbonization, resilience). Teams should consider experts in affordable housing or building performance as partners.
• Strategic or Cross-Cutting Projects: Applicants are not bound to a single area above. Any team should feel free to propose innovative ideas across the topics above (e.g., deployment of virtual power plants, distribution system needs to accommodate heavy duty electric vehicles).