The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources just released notice of the availability of $3 million in funding for Renewable Thermal Infrastructure Grants (COMBUYS bid # BD-18-1041-ENE01-ENE01-22914) to provide financial support to businesses or services that seek to establish or expand distribution or manufacturing of renewable thermal technologies or associated supply chain infrastructure in Massachusetts.
What can Grant Funds be Used for:
The program will provide funds directly to manufacturers, distributers and/or installers to implement needed renewable heating and cooling infrastructure. Eligible projects may include wood pellet delivery vehicles, portable flail debarking equipment, dry wood chip processing equipment, biofuel manufacturing or distribution equipment, equipment certification costs, geothermal drilling equipment or other equipment needed to advance the goals of the program.
What isn’t eligible:
Grant funding cannot be used for feasibility analysis or engineering design studies or onsite equipment like boilers.
Maximum award under this program is $1 million with the minimum award being $100,000.
Qualifying Technologies and Fuels
The renewable thermal technologies and fuels allowed under this program include:
Woody Biomass: Supply chain infrastructure that supports utilizing woody biomass for thermal processing and/or space conditioning. Eligible biomass must be forest derived residues and/or thinnings harvested sustainably, or non-forest derived clean wood fuels. The program will support manufacturing and distribution of premium wood pellets and dry woodchips, and the installation services, manufacturing and testing of advanced, low-emissions, high efficiency woody biomass central heating systems.
Liquid Biofuels: The manufacture of liquid biofuels from waste feedstocks and the waste collection infrastructure are eligible. This program will support businesses seeking to produce liquid biofuels for use in heating.
Biogas: Biogas produced from anaerobic fermentation or gasification of organic matter is eligible. This program will support infrastructure development association with this technology for use in heating.
Air and Ground Source Heat Pumps: Projects that build upon existing infrastructure or development of a new supply chain, quality assurance, manufacturing or installation service of heat pump technologies in Massachusetts will be considered.
Solar Thermal: This program will not support any phase of solar thermal installations for residences or businesses, but rather will support creation or expansion of the supply chain infrastructure, quality assurance or manufacturing of solar thermal components in Massachusetts.
Other Technologies and Fuels: Technologies and fuels that support wider adoption of renewable thermal use will be considered, including compost heat recovery, district heating with a renewable thermal fuel, manufactured biomass fuel, food and organic waste, algae and dedicated energy crops.
Funding will be based upon a competitive solicitation and preference will be given to applications that support woody biomass systems. If there are not enough applications for woody biomass technologies, funding will be made available to other renewable thermal technologies.
Proposals must demonstrate at least a 50 percent cost share based on the total project cost.
Timetable:
Program Opportunity Release Date: January 19, 2018
Deadline for Bidders to Submit Questions through the COMMBUYS portal February 16, 2018
Deadline for Answers from DOER to Questions March 2, 2018
Deadline for DOER Amendments to PON March 16, 2018
Bidder Application Deadline April 13, 2018
Notification of Awards May 18, 2018
Contract Start Date June 8, 2018
This PON is being conducted under 815 CMR 2.00, has been distributed electronically using COMMBUYS, the state’s official procurement record system (htto://www.commbuys.com).
The project name is the Renewable Thermal Infrastructure Grant Program
Project number is PON-ENE-2018-009.
All notifications and amendments to this PON will be posted on COMMBUYS
For information and documents about this program opportunity, log onto COMMBUYS (www.commbuys.com), register for a user name and password, then click on Open Bids and select the category Grants on the drop down menu. The PON will be listed as above and you can click on the listing for more information.
Grant Contact for this PON is Jonathan Parrott. His phone number is 413 658-8117 and fax is 617 727-0030. His email is Jonathan.Parrott@state.ma.us