The Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the “Buildings Energy Efficiency Frontiers & Innovation Technologies” (BENEFIT) program: any grant writer interested in this program should know that the Concept Paper deadline is Feb. 7, while the full application deadline is April 5. The amount of money the “Buildings Energy Efficiency Frontiers & Innovation Technologies” (BENEFIT) program is wide: between fifteen and forty-five million. Applicants will have to hope for funding that’s on the far end of that range. Most vitally, though, the FOA is on the street, which means grant writers can access it.
Many of the organizations that want to apply are likely to be interested in grant writing and grant writers, given the challenges of applying for DOE grants and the amount of money at stake. If that describes you, please contact us. As we describe in “How we write scientific and technical grant proposals,” we’re not scientists, but we do work on a wide variety of scientific and technical projects, including many related to various aspects of building energy efficiency, and other frontier and innovation technologies.
Some of those efforts include projects related to batteries, geothermal energy, weatherization, and solar panels. We’ve not yet worked on heat-pump-specific projects, but, given the importance of heat pumps to the future of the energy world, we’d be happy to find companies in need of grant writers for their heat-pump projects. We’ve read many of Vaclav Smil’s books about energy, power, and the fundamentals of the technologies that underlie human civilization, and consequently we’re perhaps better prepared to offer grant writing services to organizations interested in the Buildings Energy Efficiency Frontiers & Innovation Technologies (BENEFIT) FOA.
The DOE lists five major topic areas for applicants in the Buildings Energy Efficiency Frontiers & Innovation Technologies (BENEFIT) FOA, and those five major topic areas include:
* Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) and Water Heating (WH)
* Thermal Energy Storage (TES)
* Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)
* Plug loads and lighting
* Opaque Building Envelope
Each major topic area also has sub-topics, which facilitates the ease of understanding the program for applicants. As of this writing, you can find the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) on the DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) website. We expect competition to be fierce, but we also expect that many organizations that could use funding for the Buildings Energy Efficiency Frontiers & Innovation Technologies (BENEFIT) won’t be able to submit complete, compelling, and technically accurate applications—which is a shame. A high-quality grant writer can make complete, compelling, and technically accurate applications happen, in any of the topic areas and sub-topic areas listed above. The Concept Paper due date is closer than it may appear.
Quality, professional grant writers need to be aware of BENEFIT and ready to act. This is a major funding opportunity in the clean energy space.
