Funding

Deadline passed. Most recent deadline: December 6, 2021. Under the Environmental Education Grants Program, EPA seeks grant applications from eligible applicants to support environmental education projects that promote environmental awareness and stewardship and help provide people with the skills to take responsible actions to protect the environment. This grant program provides financial support for projects that design, demonstrate, and/or disseminate environmental education practices, methods, or techniques. The total estimated funding for this competitive opportunity in U.S. EPA Region 10 is up to $300,000. The Region expects to award three or four grants for no less than $50,000, and no more than $100,000 each. Region 10 covers the states of Alaska (AK), Idaho (ID), Oregon (OR), and Washington (WA). View the Region 10 request for applications (RFA) here. 

EPA’s Urban Waters Program helps local residents and their organizations, particularly those in underserved communities, restore their urban waters in ways that also benefit community and economic revitalization. One of the ways the Urban Waters Program is accomplishing this mission is through the Urban Waters Small Grants Program. This program recognizes that healthy and accessible urban waters can help grow local businesses and enhance educational, recreational, social, and employment opportunities in nearby communities.

This RFA seeks to understand the health effects from climate change mediated by indoor environments. A specific interest is the evaluation of adaptation guidelines, such as energy-saving building modifications, from a health perspective. Additional optional goals are 1) the understanding of behavioral adaptations, e. g. time spent outdoors, or use of natural ventilation and 2) extension of building ventilation models to newer energy-efficient buildings and evaluation of existing models against independent data sets.

Recent Deadline: 1/29/2021 EPA provides GAP financial and technical assistance to tribal governments and intertribal consortia to assist tribes in planning, developing, and establishing the capacity to implement federal environmental programs administered by the EPA and to assist in implementation of tribal solid and hazardous waste programs in accordance with applicable provisions of law, including the Solid Waste Disposal Act (commonly known as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, or RCRA). As described in the GAP Guiding Principles, this support promotes tribal government efforts to develop core environmental program capacities (administrative, financial management, information management, environmental baseline needs assessment, public education/communication, legal, and technical/analytical) and baseline capacities for media-specific programs (e.g., ambient air quality, water quality, managing waste, and other EPA-administered statutory programs).

Deadline passed. Most recent deadline: June 20, 2023. The purpose of the Pollution Prevention Grant: Environmental Justice Through Safer and more Sustainable Products is to provide pollution prevention (P2) technical assistance to businesses (e.g., information, training, expert advice) in order to improve human health and the environment in disadvantaged communities by increasing the supply, demand and use of safer and more sustainable products, such as those that are certified by EPA’s Safer Choice program, or those that conform to EPA’s Recommendations for Specifications, Standards and Ecolabels for Federal Purchasing (Recommendations).

Past Deadline: 5/7/2021. The Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving (EJCPS) Cooperative Agreement Program provides financial assistance to eligible organizations working on or planning to work on projects to address local environmental and/or public health issues in their communities. The program assists recipients in building collaborative partnerships with other stakeholders (e.g., local businesses and industry, local government, medical service providers, academia, etc.) to develop solutions that will significantly address environmental and/or public health issue(s) at the local level. Additionally, the EJCPS Program requires selected applicants, or recipients, to use the EPA’s Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Model as part of their projects. The model aims to address local environmental and/or public health issues in a collaborative manner with various stakeholders such as communities, industry, academic institutions, and others. Case Studies highlight some of the successful and effective strategies of previous projects.

Deadline passed. Most recent deadline: February 15, 2023. The EPA is seeking applications proposing projects that inform the public about new or existing residential or community recycling programs; provide information about the recycled materials that are accepted as part of a residential or community recycling program that provides for the separate collection of residential solid waste from recycled material; and increases collection rates and decreases contamination in residential and community recycling programs. Projects will improve consumer recycling education with the goal of achieving separate collection of recycled material across the nation, maximizing the efficient reuse of materials, and identifying strategies that otherwise result in an increase in volume of recyclable materials. The EPA also recognizes and encourages applications that demonstrate evidence-based messaging and strategies associated with effective communication campaigns designed to increase prevention, reuse, repair, remanufacture, recycling, anaerobic digestion, and composting in communities and/or decrease contamination in the recycling stream. This approach to community-informed messaging goes beyond education only by emphasizing researching the audience, building trust, and reducing audience barriers while emphasizing benefits for desired action.

In addition, the EPA is seeking applications for recycling education and outreach projects that address environmental justice concerns and focus predominantly on addressing the disproportionate and adverse human health, environmental, climate-related and other cumulative impacts, as well as the accompanying economic challenges of such impacts, resulting from industrial, governmental, commercial and/or other actions that have affected and/or currently affect people/communities of color, low income, tribal, and indigenous populations, and if applicable, other vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, children, and those with pre-existing medical conditions. Apply here.

Deadline: September 26, 2023. President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act authorized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to implement the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), a historic $27 billion investment to combat the climate crisis by mobilizing financing and private capital for greenhouse gas- and air pollution-reducing projects in communities across the country. As part of this program, EPA is launching a $7 billion Solar for All competition — designed to spur the deployment of residential distributed solar energy to lower energy bills for millions of Americans and catalyze transformation in markets serving low-income and disadvantaged communities. Solar for All will tackle the financial and non-financial barriers that limit the ability of low-income and disadvantaged communities across the country to benefit from the rapid growth in distributed solar capacity, thus advancing the Biden-Harris Administration’s climate and environmental justice goals. This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is for the $7 billion Solar for All competition. This competition will award up to 60 grants to states, territories, Tribal governments, municipalities, and eligible nonprofit recipients to expand the number of low-income and disadvantaged communities primed for distributed solar investment—enabling millions of low-income households to access affordable, resilient, and clean solar energy. Grantees will use funds to expand existing low-income solar programs or design and deploy new Solar for All programs nationwide. EPA will not fund individual projects under this competition. EPA’s $7 billion Solar for All competition will help deliver on the climate and environmental justice goals of the United States. To achieve these goals, Solar for All grantees will provide subsidies and other financial assistance to residential rooftop and residential-serving community solar projects in and benefiting low-income and disadvantaged communities in addition to project-deployment technical assistance such as workforce development, community outreach, and other project-deployment support (e.g., interconnection technical assistance, siting and permitting support) to help overcome barriers to solar deployment.

Source Reduction Assistance (SRA) grants fund innovative source reduction approaches (also known as “pollution prevention” or “P2”). P2 means reducing or eliminating pollutants from entering any waste stream or otherwise released into the environment prior to recycling, treatment, or disposal. In keeping with the statutory authorities under this program, SRA grant projects must use one or more of the following technical assistance methods to carry out source reduction/P2 activities: a) research, b) investigation, c) experiments, d) education, e) training, f) studies and/or g) demonstration of innovative techniques.

Deadline Passed 04/03/2019. Deadline Unknown for 2020. EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality (OTAQ) is soliciting proposals nationwide for projects that achieve significant reductions in diesel emissions in terms of tons of pollution produced by diesel engines and diesel emissions exposure, particularly from fleets located in areas designated as having poor air quality. Further, priority for funding will be given to projects which result in outcomes that benefit affected communities, those that engage affected communities with respect to the design and performance of the project, and those which can demonstrate the ability to promote and continue efforts to reduce emissions after the project has ended. 

Grant deadline unknown for 2016. This notice announces the availability of funds and solicits applications from eligible entities to provide tribal training, technical and outreach support for the American Indian Air Quality Training Program. The American Indian Air Quality Training Program (AIAQTP) provides workshop training, internships and technical support to tribal governments seeking to investigate, develop and establish air quality management programs for lands under their jurisdiction and provides opportunity for American Indian students to pursue environmental careers in the field of air quality management. The Tribal Air Monitoring Support Center is a component of the AIAQTP, and is a partnership effort between the selected grant recipient and EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, hosted by the Radiation and Indoor Environments National (R&IEL) laboratory in Las Vegas, to provide a full spectrum of technical support to tribes undertaking air quality monitoring and related activities.

Deadline passed as of October 20, 2016. Deadline for 2017 unknown. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) mission is to protect human health and the environment. EPA’s SBIR Program supports small businesses (500 or fewer employees) to develop and commercialize novel environmental technologies that support this mission.

Unknown for 2017. Specifically, this research examines how communities can integrate ecosystem services with human health and well-being to inform their decision making and management practices. This RFA aims to develop information that allows communities to integrate environmental, societal and economic information and to better manage multiple stressors and their cumulative impacts on humans and ecosystems. The ultimate goal is to help communities achieve their own objectives while taking advantage of more relevant and accessible information about ecosystem services.

Deadline passed. Most recent deadline: January 27, 2023. The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program makes federal funds available to states, U.S territories, Indian tribal governments, and local communities for pre-disaster mitigation activities. The Building Resillient Infastructure and Communities (BRIC) program replaced the grant previously known as the Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) Grant. FEMA will provide financial assistance to eligible BRIC Applicants for the following activities: (1) Capability- and Capacity-Building (C&CB), (2) Mitigation Projects, (3) Management Costs.