Notice of Intent to Issue Funding Opportunity Announcement No. DE-FOA-0002543 Advanced Building Construction (ABC) - 2021 | DE FOA 0002544

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0002544

This notice is an advance heads-up from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), specifically the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) and its Building Technologies Office (BTO), that DOE planned to release a future Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) titled "Advanced Building Construction (ABC) - 2021." The central idea behind the planned FOA is to support research that makes it quicker and easier to renovate existing buildings and construct new ones in ways that are affordable, attractive to occupants and owners, and significantly more energy efficient. In other words, the agency is signaling that it wants innovations that reduce the time, disruption, and cost associated with upgrading or delivering buildings, while also improving performance and market appeal.

Programmatically, the planned FOA is positioned as part of BTO's broader Advanced Building Construction (ABC) initiative. The ABC effort is framed around transforming how U.S. buildings are built and retrofitted by pushing approaches that can scale in the real world, not just in demonstrations. The notice ties the planned funding to the long-term national target of a carbon-neutral building economy by 2050, emphasizing that progress will require solutions that people actually want and can realistically adopt. Rather than focusing only on technical efficiency in isolation, the notice highlights the need for "desirable, convenient, and affordable" options, which is an important signal that proposals would likely need to account for constructability, business models, user acceptance, and deployment barriers alongside energy outcomes.

The notice also indicates that the FOA would focus on three topic areas, described broadly as priority needs for transforming the U.S. building stock. While the notice does not list those topic areas in the text provided, it makes clear that they are intended to address key bottlenecks to faster, better, and cheaper construction and renovation. It also directs readers to BTO's ABC initiative webpage and a then-current ABC factsheet that describes the program's goals and strategic structure, suggesting that the forthcoming FOA would align closely with that published framework and likely build on existing BTO efforts already underway.

From a funding mechanics standpoint, the opportunity is categorized as discretionary funding and is expected to be issued as a cooperative agreement, which typically means DOE expects substantial involvement during the project period (for example, active technical engagement, milestone reviews, and coordination on project direction and deliverables). The funding activity category is energy, and the CFDA number listed is 81.086 (a common DOE assistance listing historically associated with energy-related research and development support). The agency office listed is the DOE Golden Field Office. The eligibility field is described as unrestricted, meaning it is open to a wide range of applicant types (such as companies, universities, national labs where applicable, nonprofits, and state or local entities), subject to any clarifications that would appear in the actual FOA.

Several administrative details in the record are worth interpreting carefully because this is only a Notice of Intent, not the FOA itself. The creation date is July 16, 2021, and the notice anticipates the actual FOA would be posted to EERE Exchange in August 2021. The record shows an award ceiling of $2,500,000, and "expected awards" is listed as 0, which is consistent with the fact that this posting is not accepting applications and is not making awards by itself. It is essentially a planning signal to the market that funding is coming, allowing potential applicants time to build teams, develop technical concepts, and gather the supporting data they would need once the FOA is released.

The most important practical instruction in the notice is that no applications will be accepted in response to this posting, and applicants are told not to submit questions or otherwise respond to the Notice of Intent. Instead, prospective applicants are encouraged to use the lead time to prepare: identify partners (for example, product manufacturers, builders, retrofit contractors, software providers, building owners, utilities, or finance partners), define the problem and target market, assemble preliminary performance and cost data, and plan how the work would move from research into field validation and eventual adoption. The clear takeaway is that DOE intended to invest in R&D that can accelerate modernization of the building sector while keeping solutions grounded in affordability and real-world deployment, in direct service of a 2050 carbon-neutral buildings trajectory.

• The Department of Energy, Golden Field Office in the energy sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Notice of Intent to Issue Funding Opportunity Announcement No. DE-FOA-0002543 Advanced Building Construction (ABC) - 2021" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.086.
• This funding opportunity was created on Jul 16, 2021.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 15, 2021. (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 $2,500,000.00 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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