Inactive

General Background The Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) Initiative is a collaborative research effort administered by NREL and supported by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EER... General Background The Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) Initiative is a collaborative research effort administered by NREL and supported by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). C2C seeks to foster local clean energy transitions across multiple sectors (grid, buildings, and mobility) and help communities equitably access the economic and environmental benefits of clean energy. As significant investments in new clean energy technologies and their supply chains continue, this opportunity has been designed to ensure all communities benefit, including disadvantaged communities, as prescribed by President Biden’s Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Under-served Communities Through the Federal Government; Executive Order 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad; and Executive Order 14017, America’s Supply Chains. Through C2C program activities, the DOE will embolden and inspire communities, build confidence in the feasibility of existing clean energy ambitions, develop plans and actions that are technically valid and data-driven, and drive implementation decisions to ensure more socially equitable energy-sector outcomes. C2C will connect coalitions of local governments, community-based organizations, and electricity utilities with technical expertise at DOE and its national laboratories to support the planning and implementation of clean energy transitions across the electrical grid, buildings, and transportation that are just, safe, secure, reliable, resilient, affordable, and reflective of local and regional priorities. Applying community teams will consist at a minimum of representatives from local governments, local utilities and community-based organizations serving the applying communities. The applying community will also indicate which organization will serve as the lead organization to act as the Subcontractor. Stated support from additional relevant stakeholders, such as universities, regional organizations, trade organizations, metropolitan planning organizations, among others, will also make for a stronger application. For each organization in the applying team, there must be at least one designated representative who has the authority to make decisions on behalf of their organization, the time to engage with the C2C team, and the awareness of the local context to appropriately represent the community throughout the engagement. The lead organization will be required to submit at least two representatives, a primary and secondary. The C2C program aims to dramatically accelerate the speed and scale of community-wide commitments, plans, and deployment of clean energy and clean transportation systems/technologies, resiliency, security, and environmental justice, in alignment with President Biden’s 2035 and 2050 clean energy goals. C2C will provide community stakeholders with expert advice, technical guidance, best practices, and educational materials to accelerate the design, demonstration, development, and deployment of clean energy plans. It will also equip communities with world-leading analytical tools, expertise, and access to the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) research platform, which allows communities to validate their clean energy solutions prior to deployment. C2C also aims to inspire action, raise ambitions, and build confidence across the United States on the feasibility of achieving clean energy transitions through sharing success stories across a broad network of communities. Specific Background Through the C2C In-Depth Technical Partnerships, National Labs will provide multi-year support (36 months) to selected applying community teams. Communities will receive subcontract funding to support hiring staff or consultants, facilitation and community engagement support, and extensive technical support from the DOE national laboratory complex using modelling & analysis and demonstrations at ARIES as well as broad array of other technical advisory services. (Subcontract funding will only be accessible to local government and community-based organization stakeholders.) Initial C2C efforts will focus on: • Developing robust technical assistance activities that address the communities’ clean energy challenges, align with the communities’ plans and priorities, and support the achievement of clean energy goals across multiple sectors. • Leading activities to solicit broader community input and incorporate it into technical activities to ensure results are aligned with the community’s priorities and specific context. C2C efforts will then executing the outlined technical assistance activities. Finally, C2C will work with each community to share the results from these technical assistance activities and develop implementation plans that will put the results of these activities into practice. C2C will provide technical assistance to address cross-sectoral issues in an integrated fashion. Cross-sectoral in this context refers to issues that span multiple topic areas in ways that must be considered holistically to appropriately address. These topic areas include: electricity generation; mobility (both public and private); and buildings. Additional topics such as energy security, resilience, and disaster preparedness and work force and economic development in the context of the above topic areas are also eligible for C2C. Importantly, equity and environmental justice considerations will be integrated throughout all program activities. Cross-sectoral questions will explore the intersection of individual topic areas. Example research areas for individual topics areas include: • Electricity generation: Identify the potential for and trade-offs between different low-carbon generation and storage technologies that meet community clean energy goals. Evaluate the potential for behind-the-meter generating resources to meet demand locally. • Mobility: quantify energy and GHG impacts from emerging transportation technologies, systems, and services, which can include equitable EV charging network design, or evaluating the mobility energy productivity (a measure of accessibility that includes energy efficiency) of novel mobility technologies such as on-demand transit and/or micromobility systems (e.g., shared electric bikes). Such topics are enumerated in the EERE Energy Efficient Mobility Systems program. • Buildings: Develop strategies to decarbonize the building sector through a combination of energy efficiency measures, electrification of end uses, demand-side management, and distributed energy resources such as solar power, battery storage, and building control systems. Ensure resilience and reliability of building systems to withstand events such as natural disasters so that communities may safely ride out periods of service interruptions. Round 1 Technical questions must be received in writing no later than 03/13/23 Round 2 Technical questions must be received in writing no later than 04/10/23 Round 3 Technical questions must be received in writing no later than 05/01/23 Amendment 1 posted 3/15/23. Amendment 2 posted 4/11/23. Amendment 3 posted 5/4/23.