The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced up to $20 million in funding for a new program to develop technologies to quantify feedstock-related emissions at the field level. The Systems for Monitoring and Analytics for Renewable Transportation Fuels from Agricultural Resources and Management (SMARTFARM) program seeks to develop monitoring technologies to quantify feedstock-related emissions and enable new market incentives for efficiency in feedstock production and carbon management.

SMARTFARM projects will work to bridge the data gap in the biofuel supply chain by funding technologies that can replace national averages and emissions factors for feedstock-related emissions with field-level estimates. These technologies will work to reliably, accurately, and cost-effectively quantify feedstock production lifecycle emissions at the field level (i.e., scalable to >80 acres). If successful, feedstock producers will be able to leverage new, data-driven market incentives to catalyze efficiency improvements in feedstock production and carbon management, reducing annual U.S. emissions.

To learn more about ARPA-E’s SMARTFARM program, click here. The deadline to submit a concept paper for SMARTFARM is 9:30 a.m. ET on February 19, 2019.  Please contact OSRP as soon as possible if you wish to submit a concept paper.