Industrial Demonstration Program Concept Paper Notifications
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) responded to Concept Papers submitted for the Industrial Demonstrations program. Funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, the Industrial Demonstrations Program will be a central driver in accelerating industry towards deep decarbonization, enabling new markets for cleaner products, and benefiting local manufacturing communities.
In March 2023, DOE announced a roughly $6 billion funding opportunity to accelerate decarbonization projects in energy-intensive industries and provide American manufacturers a competitive advantage in the emerging global clean energy economy.
For the first stage of this process, OCED required Concept Paper submittals and reviewed 411 submissions, of which 130 were encouraged to submit a Full Application. In these Concept Papers, applicants requested more than $60 billion in federal funding—roughly 10 times the size of DOE’s $6 billion solicitation. Concept Papers included, in aggregate, nearly $100 billion of private capital alongside DOE’s federal investment. Applicants proposed projects in all 50 states and Puerto Rico and indicated interest in pursuing a diverse range of transformative technological solutions.
OCED issued notifications encouraging or discouraging applicants from submitting Full Applications. Notifications followed an assessment of each Concept Paper based on evaluation criteria that included decarbonization potential, timeliness, market viability, replicability, community benefits, and overall project strength. The Concept Paper process allows OCED to provide feedback to potential applicants to ensure they are producing the best applications possible and to better understand the types of final applications the Department will receive.
While OCED provided written Concept Paper feedback, OCED is also planning to host a webinar on June 7, 2023, for participants to hear directly from the office. While the Department will not publicly share the Concept Papers or feedback, applicants are free to publicly share their notice if they so choose. These encourage/discourage notifications do not preclude any entity that submitted an eligible Concept Paper from submitting a Full Application. The final application deadline is August 11, 2023 at 5 p.m., ET. DOE expects to select projects for award negotiations in winter 2023/2024.
For more information regarding the Industrial Demonstrations Program Concept Paper notifications, please visit OCED’s Industrial Demonstrations Notifications webpage here.
Due to the high volume of Concept Papers, we invite experts with skills and experiences related to industrial decarbonization as well as environmental and energy justice, community benefits, workforce and labor, and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility to sign up to participate as independent merit reviewers. Register using the button below.
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