DE-FOA-0002452 Funding Opportunity Announcement: Industrial Assessment Centers

for Reviewer Comments to the table on page 1; edit the first paragraph in Section III.F., page 28, to clarify that only one application is allowed per institution; and fix missing format issue of labeling “Funding Opportunity Description” on page 7 as the start of section I. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is being issued by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO). The U.S. manufacturing sector uses 25% of the nation’s energy and has an annual energy bill of more than $150 billion. Efficiency improvements in manufacturing not only benefit the manufacturing sector, but also impact the energy efficiency of products used throughout the economy. AMO's technical partnerships support the development, deployment and validation of technologies and practices including increasing the productivity and competitiveness of American manufacturers and other large energy-using facilities and continuing the education and development of the US workforce of energy professionals. The Federal Government has been funding the Industrial Assessment Center (IAC)1 program, formerly called the Energy Analysis and Diagnostic Center program, since 1976. The goal of the IAC program is twofold: first, to help US manufacturing competitiveness by providing assessments and recommendations for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on energy efficiency, productivity, sustainability and competitiveness – including measuring the impacts of these recommendations on reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and second, to address a growing shortage of engineering professionals with applied energy and manufacturing-related skills by training a diverse cross-section of engineering students through hands-on involvement in these assessments. This is a restricted eligibility announcement. Eligibility is restricted to the following types of entities: a U.S. college or school of engineering that is an integral part of its institutional structure and that has at least one of its four year undergraduate programs accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission or the Technology Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) or equivalent (The IAC must be in the engineering department that holds the programmatic ABET or equivalent accreditation). The U.S. college or school of engineering must be physically located in the U.S. Eligible minority-serving institutions (MSIs) that meet the eligibility requirements are encouraged to apply.