Funding-DOE
- Productivity Enhanced Algae and Tool-Kits (PEAK); February 22, 2017
Agency
Department of Energy
Golden Field Office
Description
The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
is issuing, on behalf of the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), a Funding
Opportunity Announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0001628, entitled “Productivity Enhanced
Algae and Tool-Kits (PEAK).” Through this FOA, DOE will support
multidisciplinary biological innovation to deliver strains, tools, data, and
techniques to enhance algal biofuel potential and enable accelerated future
innovation in algal biofuels and bioproducts. This FOA will fund a variety of
projects and approaches that overcome species-specific, ecological, and
practical challenges to achieving improved algal areal productivity and to fuel
yield (i.e. biomass composition).
This FOA has two topic areas:
1) Topic Area 1: Strain
Improvement This topic area is for small teams to develop enhanced algal
strains with increased areal productivity and biofuel yield, along with
improved or novel algal toolkits and/or methods. Strain improvement methods may
include gene discovery and biological pathway analysis, directed evolution,
breeding, and/or genetic engineering of novel algal strains that can
reproducibly out-perform the current best available strains in outdoor
conditions, where “performance” is represented by productivity, robustness, and
composition. Applicants must include a detailed discussion of the reasoning
behind their proposed strategy or strategies, strain choice, and why the
proposed strain improvement approach has/have the highest probability of
success.
2) Topic Area 2: Cultivation
Biology Improvement This topic area is for small teams to develop increased
areal productivity and biofuel yield through enhanced management of ecological
or abiotic contributions to cultivation biology, along with improved or novel
algal toolkits and/or methods. Cultivation biology development improvements may
include leveraging natural or designed microbial assemblages of the algal
culture ecosystem to boost performance and resist pathogens, and understanding
species-specific cultivation conditions. This topic area is about improving
management of a current cultivation system. Abiotic contributions, including
nutrient and stochastic climatological variables, can have a profound effect on
outdoor performance. Topic Area 2 supports improving the understanding of
physiology and performance under fluctuating and uncontrollable abiotic
conditions. Applicants must include a detailed discussion of the reasoning
behind their proposed strategy or strategies and why the proposed cultivation
improvement approach has/have the highest probability of success.
The FOA will require selected projects to participate in a
cultivation readiness validation and benchmarking, or friendly “challenge”, the
PEAK Challenge. In the PEAK Challenge, project performers will, after passing an
interim Go/No-Go decision point to validate seasonal areal productivity and
biomass composition, and towards the conclusion of their development efforts,
cultivate their organism(s) in an outdoor relevant environment – a field-based
campaign with adequate controls and duration. Utilizing the growing season and
cultivation equipment of their choice, each team will demonstrate their peak
productivity potential over the course of their culture’s growth curve during
this field challenge.
Announcement Number:
DE-FOA-0001628
Closing Date:
Concept
Paper: January 13, 2017
Application:
Feb 22, 2017
Link to Full Announcement
http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=290717
Contact Information
Stephanie D. Sites