Impact Overview (PDF)

Bioeconomy policy support hub for Member States, regions and sectors is sponsored by European Commission — Horizon Europe. Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes: most Member States and regions [1] have established the bioeconomy as an important policy field. Effective bioeconomy policies and strategies are developed and implemented with specific impact targets in mind; policies and action plans and roadmaps are coordinated across parts of government (e.g. Ministries) and across the quadruple helix (government, sectors, research & innovation, society) to take into account the cross-sectoral and place-based character of the bioeconomy, and the need for a whole of government approach. Platforms are established to facilitate dialogue, experimentation, learning and coordination; all actors of the quadruple helix (e.g. policy makers, NGOs, economic sectors) are aware of the bioeconomy, as well as of the potential and challenges that are specific for their perspective and context. The bioeconomy concept, its principles and its solutions and innovations are mainstreamed by sectors (e.g. food, textiles, chemicals, energy, agriculture, forestry). Scope: Proposals should: establish a European Bioeconomy Policy Support Hub to provide innovative approaches, hands-on support, learning and advise to Member States and regions on plans, roadmaps, policies and collaborations to deploy their bioeconomies; provide innovative tools to assess, on an ongoing basis, the stage of development of bioeconomy policies and strategies in Member States and regions, and to assess the quality of their implementation; provide relevant support, new approaches and recommendations to improve and/or take next steps. Take into account the learnings of the Report “ Deploying the bioeconomy in the EU ” (2021, European Commission), as well as the results of relevant Horizon Europe projects (e.g. ShapingBio, CEE2ACT, SCALE-UP); provide an overview of the uptake of new bioeconomy solutions based on biomass and biological resources (including ecosystems) in European value chains and sectors (including service sectors); provide innovative approaches, hands-on support, learning and advise to Member States and regions to deploy their bioeconomies. This can include activities that aim help to: inform and engage political leadership on the potential of the bioeconomy; establish or improve platforms facilitate policy dialogue, experimentation, learning and coordination (e.g. policy labs); map the bioeconomy’s potential across sectors and society at regional and Member State level, and increase awareness; advance skills of policy makers, and learn from best practices in bioeconomy policy and implementation; set-up or improve local bioeconomy councils, i.e. platforms for dialogue between government, sectors, academia and society (quadruple helix) on bioeconomy policies, plans, roadmaps and their implementation; put in place collaborations that facilitate the scaling-up of bioeconomy solutions in value chains and sectors that are relevant for the Member State or region; monitor the bioeconomy as well as the change process it brings; ensure innovative approaches, hands-on support, learning and advise that is both generic (targeting all Member States and regions; or groups of Member States and regions) and tailormade (in response to questions from specific Member States and regions that express clear need and commitment to collaborate); carry out activities to maximize the geographical spread of its support and advice; enable structural dialogue with European Commission services, and collaborate with relevant initiatives such as the Circular Bio-based Europe (CBE) Joint Undertaking, European University Alliances, the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform or the BIOEAST initiative collaborate with such partners on a roadmap to ensure that key results, tools and approaches can be sustained after the end of the project; collaborate with relevant Horizon Europe projects (e.g. ShapingBio) and/or build on their results. The Joint Re Programme areas: Horizon Europe (HORIZON), Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness, Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment, Bio-based Innovation Systems in the EU Bioeconomy Keywords: Bioeconomy, EU research policy /Research policies in the EU, Industrial policy, Innovation policy, Public administration, Advice, Best practice, Member State, Policy support, Region

Road Safety and resilience of rural areas is sponsored by European Commission — Horizon Europe. Expected Outcome: Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes: Implementation of the NWRSA methodology for secondary rural roads; Innovative and effective enforcement strategies, incentive mechanisms and measures raising risk awareness for fostering safer behaviour; Prevention strategies for reducing road fatalities and serious road traffic injuries on rural roads along with the respective implementation guidelines and policy measures tailored to the responsible stakeholders (regional authorities, police, healthcare professionals, national governments, etc.); GIS-based application to assist local and regional authorities in identifying and mapping the impact of extreme weather phenomena and other natural disasters (such as floods, fires, storms, heavy snowfall etc.) on the safety and resilience of the road network in their jurisdiction. Scope: With more than 50% of all EU road fatalities occurring in rural areas along with evidence suggesting that crashes and crash-related fatalities in rural roads vary from those in urban roads or motorways, it is imperative to understand and mitigate the safety risks in rural roads in view of the EU’s ambition to move towards Vision Zero by 2050. Local and regional authorities have an important role to play to reduce road fatalities and serious injuries. In the EU, the Road Infrastructure Safety Management (RISM) Directive introduced the concept of network-wide road safety assessment (NWRSA) and the concept of proactive road safety assessment through the understanding of the in-built safety of roads. Considering safety at the network-level allows for an overview of the road safety performance instead of focusing on isolated parts of it, while the in-built safety assessment aims to identify parts of the road that have been omitted by crash-based analyses (such crash clusters or hotspot analysis) as they do not concentrate the majority of crashes, yet are crash-prone and/or uncomfortable to navigate. According to the provisions of the RISM Directive, a methodology has been developed to assess the network-wide safety of motorways and primary rural roads based on their combined crash-based and in-built safety assessments. While this is a first step in understanding road safety conditions on rural roads, secondary and lower-class roads are not covered and, at the same time, there is not adequate information on road user behaviour. In an ageing society, cognitive and physical impairments pose an increasing threat to safe mobility. In rural areas, people with any kind of impairment or disability often lack alternatives to driving a car for their mobility needs. Addressing these issues will not only enhance road safety but also improve the quality of life and prevent the social exclusion of these people. In addition to road safety issues, local and regional authorities manage risks associated with extreme weather phenomena and other natural disasters like floods, fires, storms or heavy snowfall. As these may affect safety and operations, relevant authorities need to adopt a more holistic resilience monitoring and response. Research should support addressing these challenges by undertaking all the following actions in at least three regions covering both primary and secondary rural roads of adequate length to allow for region-level comparisons: Demonstrate the practical applicability of the NWRSA methodology and expand its use to all rural roads for an easy, low-cost, flexible and transparent, yet sufficiently accurate assessment of road infrastructure safety. Identify information gaps and propose methods to leverage available data to supplement the understanding of crash causation and outcomes. Develop prevention strategies and measures to reduce fatalities and serious injuries in rural areas with a focus on high-risk locations and situations and on improving road user behaviour. This includes the development of reliable and easy-to-use methods to provide qua Programme areas: Horizon Europe (HORIZON), Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness, Climate, Energy and Mobility, Industrial Competitiveness in Transport, Clean, Safe and Accessible Transport and Mobility, Smart Mobility

The purpose of this modification is to clarify the meaning of the Program Policy Factors in Section V.C. To obtain a copy of the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) please go to the ARPA-E website at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov. To apply to this NOFO, Applicants must register with and submit application materials through ARPA-E eXCHANGE (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Registration.aspx). For detailed guidance on using ARPA-E eXCHANGE, please refer to the ARPA-E eXCHANGE User Guide (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx). ARPA-E will not review or consider concept papers submitted through other means. For problems with ARPA-E eXCHANGE, email ExchangeHelp@hq.doe.gov (with NOFO name and number in the subject line). Questions about this NOFO? Check the Frequently Asked Questions available at http://arpa-e.energy.gov/faq. For questions that have not already been answered, email ARPA-E-CO@hq.doe.gov. AGENCY OVERVIEW The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), an organization within the Department of Energy (DOE), is chartered by Congress in the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69), as amended by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-358), as further amended by the Energy Act of 2020 (P.L. 116-260): “(A) to enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies that— (i) reduce imports of energy from foreign sources; (ii) reduce energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; (iii) improve the energy efficiency of all economic sectors; (iv) provide transformative solutions to improve the management, clean-up, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel; and (v) improve the resilience, reliability, and security of infrastructure to produce, deliver, and store energy; and (B) to ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies.” ARPA-E issues this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) under its authorizing statute codified at 42 U.S.C. § 16538. The NOFO and any cooperative agreements or grants made under this NOFO are subject to 2 C.F.R. Part 200 as supplemented by 2 C.F.R. Part 910. ARPA-E funds research on, and the development of, transformative science and technology solutions to address the energy and environmental missions of the Department. The agency focuses on technologies that can be meaningfully advanced with a modest investment over a defined period of time in order to catalyze the translation from scientific discovery to early-stage technology. For the latest news and information about ARPA-E, its programs and the research projects currently supported, see: http://arpa-e.energy.gov/. ARPA-E funds transformational research. Existing energy technologies generally progress on established “learning curves” where refinements to a technology and the economies of scale that accrue as manufacturing and distribution develop drive improvements to the cost/performance metric in a gradual fashion. This continual improvement of a technology is important to its increased commercial deployment and is appropriately the focus of the private sector or the applied technology offices within DOE. In contrast, ARPA-E supports transformative research that has the potential to create fundamentally new learning curves. ARPA-E technology projects typically start with cost/performance estimates well above the level of an incumbent technology. Given the high risk inherent in these projects, many will fail to progress, but some may succeed in generating a new learning curve with a projected cost/performance metric that is significantly better than that of the incumbent technology. ARPA-E will provide support at the highest funding level only for submissions with significant technology risk, aggressive timetables, and careful management and mitigation of the associated risks. ARPA-E funds technology with the potential to be disruptive in the marketplace. The mere creation of a new learning curve does not ensure market penetration. Rather, the ultimate value of a technology is determined by the marketplace, and impactful technologies ultimately become disruptive – that is, they are widely adopted and displace existing technologies from the marketplace or create entirely new markets. ARPA-E understands that definitive proof of market disruption takes time, particularly for energy technologies. Therefore, ARPA-E funds the development of technologies that, if technically successful, have clear disruptive potential, e.g., by demonstrating capability for manufacturing at competitive cost and deployment at scale. ARPA-E funds applied research and development (R&D). The Office of Management and Budget defines “applied research” as an “original investigation undertaken in order to acquire new knowledge…directed primarily towards a specific practical aim or objective” and defines “experimental development” as “creative and systematic work, drawing on knowledge gained from research and practical experience, which is directed at producing new products or processes or improving existing products or processes.”0F1 Applicants interested in receiving financial assistance for basic research (defined by the Office of Management and Budget as “experimental or theoretical work undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge of the underlying foundations of phenomena and observable facts”)1 should contact the DOE’s Office of Science (http://science.energy.gov/). Office of Science national scientific user facilities (http://science.energy.gov/user-facilities/) are open to all researchers, including ARPA-E Applicants and awardees. These facilities provide advanced tools of modern science including accelerators, colliders, supercomputers, light sources and neutron sources, as well as facilities for studying the nanoworld, the environment, and the atmosphere. Projects focused on early-stage R&D for the improvement of technology along defined roadmaps may be more appropriate for support through the DOE applied energy offices including: the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (http://www.eere.energy.gov/), the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (https://www.energy.gov/fecm/office-fossil-energy-and-carbon-management), the Office of Nuclear Energy (http://www.energy.gov/ne/office-nuclear-energy), and the Office of Electricity (https://www.energy.gov/oe/office-electricity). ARPA-E encourages submissions stemming from ideas that still require proof-of-concept R&D efforts as well as those for which some proof-of-concept demonstration already exists. Submissions can propose a project with the end deliverable being an extremely creative, but partial solution. PROGRAM OVERVIEW The Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential (SCALEUP) Ready program provides a vital mechanism for the support of innovative energy R&D that complements ARPA-E’s primary focus on early-stage transformational energy technologies that require proof of concept. Technologies that achieve substantial technical advancement under ARPA-E support may still face significant technical and commercial challenges upon completion of an award's funding period, and thus are at risk of being stranded in their development path once ARPA-E funding ends. Experience across ARPA-E’s diverse energy portfolios, and input from a wide range of investors and industry stakeholders, indicate that pre-commercial scaling projects are critical to establish practical performance and cost parameters. These pre-commercial scaling projects aim to 1) translate the performance achieved at bench scale to commercially scalable versions of the technology, 2) integrate the technology with broader systems, 3) provide extended performance data, and 4) validate the manufacturability and reliability of new energy technologies. Successful scaling projects should enable industry stakeholders to justify the substantial commitments of financial resources, personnel, manufacturing facilities, and materials necessary to subsequently deploy the technologies at a commercial scale. SCALEUP Ready seeks to scale the most promising technologies previously funded by ARPA-E. The possibility of ARPA-E-funded technologies becoming stranded along their development pathways leaves substantial intellectual property developed with American taxpayer dollars vulnerable to adoption by foreign competitors, who capture it for continued development and economic benefit overseas. This harms national competitiveness, as U.S. industries often fall behind on the development, scaling, and manufacturing of technologies necessary to compete in rapidly evolving global energy markets. Thus, projects selected for SCALEUP Ready will meet ARPA-E’s statutory goals by “accelerating transformational technological advances in areas that industry by itself is not likely to undertake because of technical and financial uncertainty." Funding Opportunity Number: DE-FOA-0003467. Assistance Listing: 81.135. Funding Instrument: CA,O. Category: OZ,ST. Award Amount: $5M – $20M per award.