Notice of Intent (NOI) DE-FOA-0001708 for Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0001628 “Productivity Enhanced Algae and Tool-Kits (PEAK)” | DE FOA 0001708

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0001708

Notice of Intent (NOI) DE-FOA-0001708 signals the Department of Energy (DOE), through EERE and the Golden Field Office, is considering a future competitive Funding Opportunity Announcement connected to DE-FOA-0001628 called "Productivity Enhanced Algae and Tool-Kits (PEAK)." The overall purpose is to push algal biofuels closer to cost competitiveness by funding applied research that targets the biological factors that most strongly drive the modeled minimum fuel selling price. In practical terms, the agency is looking for work that improves how much algae can produce per unit area and how reliably it can do that outdoors, while also improving the kind of biomass it produces for fuel pathways.

The research emphasis is explicitly biological and oriented toward real-world cultivation conditions rather than idealized lab settings. The opportunity frames a common bottleneck in algae R&D: many advances look promising at bench scale but do not hold up in outdoor ponds or other field-relevant environments where variables like light intensity, temperature swings, salinity, contamination, and predators can quickly erase gains. By supporting advanced biology approaches tested under cultivation conditions that better reflect future scaled deployment, the program aims to close that gap between early laboratory research and later pre-pilot or pilot efforts. The underlying message is that breakthrough reductions in algal biofuel costs will require strains that are not only productive but also environmentally robust and consistently performant in outdoor operations.

The NOI highlights a set of biological variables that are considered especially important cost drivers. These include biomass productivity and biomass composition, with composition specifically calling out lipid, protein, and carbohydrate content because those directly affect yields of fuel intermediates and downstream conversion performance. The notice also emphasizes resilience traits such as predation and pathogen resistance, halotolerance, heat and cold tolerance, and tolerance to high-intensity light (direct sunlight). These traits matter because outdoor systems are exposed to biological attacks (grazers, viruses, competing microbes) and to harsh or fluctuating environmental conditions; without resilience, high-performing strains often fail to maintain productivity over time.

Two primary Areas of Interest are anticipated. Area of Interest One, Strain Improvement, focuses on developing algal strains that deliver higher areal productivity and higher yield of biofuel intermediates in outdoor conditions. The notice is broad about acceptable scientific strategies and lists isolation of novel strains, directed evolution, breeding, and genetic engineering as likely approaches. A key expectation is reproducible outperformance relative to the current best available strains under outdoor cultivation, with "performance" defined in a balanced way across productivity, robustness, and composition rather than a single metric.

Area of Interest Two, Cultivation Improvement, focuses on boosting areal productivity and intermediate yield by improving the biological management of cultivation itself, particularly ecological and abiotic drivers that influence algae performance. The program description points to leveraging natural or designed microbial assemblages to enhance performance and exclude pathogens, and to developing understanding of which strains should be used under which cultivation conditions. An important boundary is made clear: this area is not about engineering a better physical cultivation system (for example, new pond hardware or reactor designs). Instead, it is about cultivation biology, meaning how the living ecosystem in the cultivation environment can be managed to favor the desired algae and suppress failure modes like contamination and disease.

Across both areas, the program intends to fund projects that do more than produce a single improved strain or a one-off finding. Each selected project is expected to develop at least one novel tool, technique (method), or dataset that can be used by other developers to speed innovation in that topic area after the project ends. The NOI indicates these enabling outputs could be biological, computational, or analytical in nature, as long as they materially advance the state of the art and complement the applied improvement work. This suggests DOE is aiming for results that are transferable and that reduce future R&D friction, such as standardized assays, predictive models, open datasets, or validated methods for screening robustness under field-relevant stressors.

From an administrative standpoint, EERE anticipates making multiple financial assistance awards using cooperative agreements, which typically involve substantial federal involvement during the project period compared with a standard grant. The expected period of performance for each award is about 36 months, implying multi-year applied R&D with enough time to iterate, validate outdoors, and deliver durable tools or datasets. The notice lists an award ceiling of $2 (as shown in the source record), but because this is an NOI and that ceiling is clearly not realistic for the described scope, the most sensible interpretation is that applicants should rely on the final FOA for authoritative funding ranges and any budget constraints.

Eligibility is described as unrestricted, meaning it is broadly open to entity types, subject to any additional clarifications that would appear in the eventual FOA text. The activity category is energy, with CFDA number 81.087. The notice also stresses a procedural point: this posting is only a Notice of Intent, not a solicitation, so applications are not being accepted and there is no active closing date for submissions. DOE explicitly reserves the right to issue the FOA as described, issue a significantly different FOA, or not issue a FOA at all.

Finally, the NOI states DOE planned to issue the actual FOA in December 2016 through the EERE Exchange website, and that applicants wanting official updates should register there. When and if the FOA is released, submissions would be accepted only through EERE Exchange. In other words, this notice functions as an early heads-up to the algae biofuels research community about the direction, likely topic structure, and expected deliverables of a forthcoming competitive funding opportunity focused on practical biological performance gains and broadly useful innovation toolkits.

• The Department of Energy, Golden Field Office in the energy sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Notice of Intent (NOI) DE-FOA-0001708 for Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0001628 “Productivity Enhanced Algae and Tool-Kits (PEAK)”" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.087.
• This funding opportunity was created on Dec 01, 2016.
• Applicants must submit their applications by This is a NOI. Applications are not being solicited nor accepted.. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $2.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

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