Deployment and Demonstration Opportunities for Carbon Reduction and Removal Technologies | DE FOA 0002660

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0002660

The Department of Energy, through the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), issued a public Request for Information (RFI) titled "Deployment and Demonstration Opportunities for Carbon Reduction and Removal Technologies" (Funding Opportunity Number DE FOA 0002660). This is categorized as an "Other" type opportunity rather than a traditional grant solicitation, which signals that the immediate purpose is to gather feedback from the public and stakeholders, not to make awards right away. The RFI was created on December 6, 2021, with an original closing date of February 1, 2022, and it is tied to CFDA number 81.089 (an energy-related assistance listing). Applicants were listed as "unrestricted," meaning any interested party could provide input, including companies, universities, nonprofits, state and local governments, utilities, technology developers, community groups, and individual experts.

The central goal of the RFI is to collect input that will inform DOE planning for real-world deployment and demonstration of carbon management and clean energy technologies. The RFI explicitly aligns with the federal decarbonization targets of reaching a carbon-free electricity sector by 2035 and economy-wide decarbonization by 2050. In practical terms, DOE is using this RFI to understand which technologies, project types, and implementation strategies are most ready or most needed to move from earlier research phases into large, operational demonstrations that can validate performance, cost, reliability, and community benefits under real operating conditions.

A key driver behind this planning effort is the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which provided significant federal resources and direction to accelerate demonstrations of climate and energy technologies. The RFI reflects DOE's intent to use that legislative momentum to help "prove out" carbon reduction and carbon removal approaches at scales ranging from pilot projects up to commercial-scale facilities. The emphasis on pilot-to-commercial scale is important because it highlights the common gap between lab-scale success and market adoption: many technologies stall before commercialization due to high first-of-a-kind costs, permitting complexity, infrastructure constraints, and uncertainty about long-term operations. DOE is signaling that it wants projects and pathways that can overcome those barriers and generate credible, bankable evidence that a technology works in the field.

The opportunity also stresses partnership "with industry and communities," which indicates that DOE is looking beyond purely technical validation. Demonstration projects in carbon management often raise local concerns and require local buy-in, especially when they involve industrial facilities, pipelines, geologic storage, direct air capture plants, or major power-sector infrastructure changes. By highlighting communities, DOE is pointing to expectations around stakeholder engagement, environmental justice considerations, workforce impacts, local economic development, and transparency in how projects are sited and operated. In many DOE demonstration programs, this kind of community partnership is treated as a core project requirement rather than an optional add-on, and the language here suggests the same direction.

Because this is an RFI rather than a standard funding announcement, the listed award details (such as an award ceiling of 2 and expected awards left blank) are not especially meaningful as funding parameters. Instead, the RFI functions as a planning tool to shape later competitive funding opportunities, demonstration programs, or procurement approaches. Submitting to an RFI typically helps DOE understand market readiness, identify promising technology pathways, surface risks and bottlenecks, and refine the structure of future solicitations, including eligibility rules, cost-share expectations, measurement and verification standards, reporting requirements, and criteria for selecting projects that can deliver emissions reductions at scale.

In short, DE FOA 0002660 is DOE/NETL's effort to gather broad stakeholder input to guide how federal resources under IIJA should be used to accelerate deployment and demonstration of carbon reduction and removal technologies. The underlying intent is to move technologies from promising concepts into operational projects that can materially contribute to national decarbonization goals, while being implemented in partnership with industry and with meaningful involvement of the communities affected by these projects.

• The National Energy Technology Laboratory in the energy sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Deployment and Demonstration Opportunities for Carbon Reduction and Removal Technologies" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.089.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2021-12-06.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2022-02-01. (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.

Apply for DE FOA 0002660

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