DOE Plant Engineering to Revolutionize Sustainable Energy Production and Heighten Opportunities for Novel Efficiency SBIR/STTR (PERSEPHONE SBIR/STTR)

FUNDING PROGRAM: DOE Plant Engineering to Revolutionize Sustainable Energy Production and Heighten Opportunities for Novel Efficiency SBIR/STTR (PERSEPHONE SBIR/STTR).

FUNDING OPPORTUNITY NUMBER: DE-FOA-0003552.

FUNDING AGENCIES: United States Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research Project Agency – Energy (ARPA-E).

OPPORTUNITY:

The goal of the PERSEPHONE program is to develop disruptive new technologies for bioenergy crop genetic engineering. Bioenergy provides about 5% of domestic energy consumption and has the potential to provide 5-10% more. Agriculture could also revolutionize the energy sector in other ways, such as providing precursors for chemicals and materials that are currently derived from petroleum. However, bioenergy crops may not maintain their current utility, much less achieve their potential, without transformative advances in tools to engineer them. Genetic engineering is an essential strategy to realize U.S. bioenergy potential and security.

DESCRIPTION:

The PERSEPHONE program will develop high-performance tools for bioenergy crop engineering, create novel genetic engineering modalities, and spur adoption by supporting innovative research on biocontainment. Specifically, PERSEPHONE aims to support the development of tools that could lead to an annual impact of the production of at least 1 quad of energy or mitigation of more than 60 MT of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e).

The program will support projects in three areas:

• Technical Category A will develop robust, high-performing tools for the genetic engineering of bioenergy crops that overcome transformation genotype dependence, increase throughput 10x, and/or reduce cost and timeline by 4x and 2x, respectively.
• Technical Category B will support the creation of radically new technologies for plant genetic engineering that have a pathway to achieve metrics well beyond the targets established in Category A.
• Technical Category C will support the adoption of genetically engineered bioenergy crops by developing technologies to reduce the risks of invasiveness to less than 0.1 percent and eliminate the flow of transgenes into the environment.

ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS: Small Business Concern.

COST SHARING: Cost sharing is not required for this FOA.

FUNDING AVAILABLE: 

• FUNDING AVAILABILITY: Up to $15 Million.
• INDIVIDUAL AWARD AMOUNTS: Minimum $314,000; Maximum $4.5 Million

APPLICATION DEADLINE: March 4, 2025.