Notice of Intent to Issue Front-End Engineering and Design Studies for Carbon Capture Systems on Coal and Natural Gas Power Plants Funding Opportunity Announcement | DE FOA 0002058

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0002058

This announcement is a Notice of Intent from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), specifically the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), letting the public know that DOE planned to release a future Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) called "Front-End Engineering and Design Studies for Carbon Capture Systems on Coal and Natural Gas Power Plants." The FOA number tied to that planned release is DE-FOA-0002058. The central idea behind the upcoming FOA was to support front-end engineering and design (FEED) studies for carbon capture systems that would be integrated with existing or planned coal- and natural-gas-fired power plants. In practical terms, FEED work is the detailed, pre-construction engineering and planning needed to move a complex project from a conceptual design toward something that can be financed, permitted, procured, and built, including refined process designs, equipment specifications, cost estimates, and project execution planning.

A key point of this Notice of Intent is that it was not an active solicitation and it was not accepting applications. DOE explicitly stated that no applications would be accepted under the Notice itself and that applicants should not submit questions or otherwise respond to the Notice. Instead, the Notice served as an early heads-up so that prospective applicants could use the lead time to get organized before the real FOA appeared. DOE encouraged interested parties to start preparing by developing partnerships, shaping project concepts, and assembling the technical and project data that would likely be needed once the FOA was formally released. DOE expected the actual FOA to be posted on grants.gov and fedconnect.net in the first quarter of calendar year 2019, signaling that the Notice was mainly about giving potential applicants time to prepare for a competitive funding process that would follow shortly.

From an administrative standpoint, the opportunity was categorized as discretionary funding under the energy activity category, and the anticipated funding instrument type was a cooperative agreement. A cooperative agreement typically means DOE expects substantial involvement during the project, such as technical collaboration, milestone reviews, and active federal oversight, rather than a more hands-off grant structure. The CFDA number listed was 81.089, which is associated with DOE financial assistance programs. Eligibility was described as "unrestricted," meaning it was open to any type of entity, subject to any clarifications that would later be provided in the full FOA. In effect, this suggested a broad pool of potential applicants such as private companies, utilities, engineering firms, universities, national labs, non-profits, and state or local entities, with the final eligibility rules to be confirmed when the full funding announcement was released.

The Notice includes standard listing fields like a creation date of January 11, 2019, and an original closing date of February 28, 2019, but those dates should be read in context: because this was only a Notice of Intent, the "closing date" did not function like a typical application deadline. It mainly marked the end of the notice period rather than a cutoff for proposals. The listing also shows "ExpectedAwards: 0," reinforcing that this posting itself was not making awards. An "AwardCeiling" value of 2 appears in the source data, but since the Notice did not accept applications and did not make awards, that figure was not actionable for applicants at this stage and would typically be clarified (along with total funding, number of awards, cost-share requirements, and topic areas) in the forthcoming FOA.

Overall, the substance of the opportunity is that DOE intended to invest in the engineering and design groundwork needed to advance carbon capture retrofits or integrations at fossil power plants, with FEED studies serving as a bridge between early concepts and deployable projects. Anyone interested was expected to wait for the formal FOA posting and, in the meantime, use the advance notice to line up project partners, host sites, technical teams, and supporting documentation so they could respond quickly and competitively once DE-FOA-0002058 was officially issued.

• The Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory in the energy sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Notice of Intent to Issue Front-End Engineering and Design Studies for Carbon Capture Systems on Coal and Natural Gas Power Plants Funding Opportunity Announcement" 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 Jan 11, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Feb 28, 2019 This is a Notice of Intent to issue Funding Opportunity Announcement DE-FOA-0002058. PLEASE NOTE NO APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED THROUGH THIS NOTICE. Please do not submit questions or respond to this Notice of Intent..
• 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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