Building America Industry Partnerships for High Performance Housing Innovation - 2017 | DE FOA 0001630

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0001630

The Department of Energy (DOE), through its Building Technologies Office (BTO) Residential Buildings Integration (RBI) Program, offered this 2017 funding opportunity to speed up real-world improvements in energy performance for both new and existing homes. The core purpose of the RBI Program is to drive down residential energy use by taking an integrated building systems approach, meaning projects are expected to look at how the whole house works together (envelope, HVAC, water heating, ventilation, controls, and occupant impacts) rather than treating components in isolation. RBI set a longer-term market outcome goal of reducing energy used for space conditioning and water heating in single-family homes by 40 percent by 2025 compared to 2010 levels, because those end uses represent some of the largest and most influenceable portions of home energy consumption.

This opportunity sits within the long-running Building America Program, DOE's applied research, development, and demonstration platform for residential energy efficiency. Building America has a track record dating back to 1994 and is credited with contributing to major improvements in housing innovations and national energy codes (the announcement notes over 40 housing innovations and over 40 percent increases in code rigor over time, tied in part to demonstrated high-performance envelope practices). For the current program cycle, Building America emphasized performance targets tied to climate zones and baseline year comparisons. By 2020, the program aimed to demonstrate cost-effective technologies and practices capable of reducing energy use intensity (EUI) for new homes by at least 60 percent and for existing homes by at least 40 percent, relative to average 2010 homes in each of the seven U.S. climate zones, with particular focus on reducing heating, cooling, and water-heating loads.

The FOA (DE-FOA-0001630) was designed to select additional Building America project teams in 2017, explicitly expecting close collaboration with industry partners and testing or validation in real homes rather than purely lab-based work. The emphasis was not just on efficiency gains, but also on managing the risks that can come with high-performance construction and retrofits, especially indoor air quality (IAQ) and moisture durability. In practice, DOE was looking for teams that could identify a meaningful market or technical problem, propose a strong hypothesis or solution pathway, lay out clear research questions, and present a practical plan that both proves performance and supports broad adoption (for example, through builder-ready guidance, manufacturer engagement, cost and constructability considerations, and pathways to code or standard integration). Strong partnerships with builders and/or manufacturers were highlighted as a key ingredient, reflecting the program's goal of moving innovations from research into mainstream construction and retrofit practices.

The funding opportunity included two distinct topics, and each application had to be submitted under only one topic (although applicants could submit multiple separate applications). Topic 1 focused on "Building America Technology-to-Market Roadmaps" and selected objectives, essentially targeting remaining gaps and priority items identified in the Building America Research-to-Market Plan and pushing them toward deployable solutions. Topic 2 focused on a "Baseline Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Field Study in Occupied New U.S. Homes," signaling a need to collect and analyze real-world IAQ data in new construction where tighter envelopes, different ventilation strategies, and new materials can change exposure profiles. Across both topics, DOE framed impact as a priority: proposals needed to show why the work matters at scale, how it would be executed, and how it would translate into adoption by the housing industry.

Administratively, the award instrument was a cooperative agreement, which typically means DOE anticipated substantial involvement during the project (such as technical direction, milestone reviews, and coordination with other program efforts). The opportunity was listed as discretionary funding in the energy category (CFDA 81.086) and was open to unrestricted applicant types (in other words, broadly open to eligible entities, subject to any specifics in the full FOA). The issuing agency was the DOE Golden Field Office. The FOA was posted November 3, 2016, and full applications were due February 1, 2017 at 5:00 pm ET through the EERE eXCHANGE portal (eere-exchange.energy.gov). The anticipated maximum award size was up to $1,000,000, with about 10 awards expected.

Finally, the announcement stressed that the eXCHANGE portal enforces hard submission deadlines, with submission buttons disabling automatically at the deadline. Applicants encountering technical issues were instructed to contact the eXCHANGE helpdesk (exchangehelp@hq.doe.gov) and, for late submissions caused by technical issues beyond the applicant's control, DOE indicated it would consider accepting an application only if the helpdesk was contacted and the submission was completed within 24 hours of the posted deadline, consistent with the system support process described in the FOA materials and FAQ log.

• The Department of Energy, Golden Field Office in the energy sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Building America Industry Partnerships for High Performance Housing Innovation - 2017" 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 Nov 03, 2016.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Feb 01, 2017 Submission Deadline for Full Applications 02/01/2017, 500pm ET through EERE Exchange at https://eere-Exchange.energy.gov, EEREs online application portal.. (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 $1,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 10 candidate(s).
• 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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