Grant Writing and the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL): Advancing Equity through Workforce Partnerships”
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Although the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) has the word “infrastructure” in its name, many programs funded by it—like “Advancing Equity through Workforce Partnerships”—aren’t really infrastructure, if we think of “infrastructure” as things like “holes in the ground, roads, bridges, telecom systems,” and so forth: instead, “Advancing Equity” (to use a shorter, easier-to-write-and-remember title) is devoted to training low-income people to become solar-panel installers. It’s job training, not research. “Solar-panel installer” is likely to be a growth industry over time—though solar-panel installation may not be maximally effective without additional process changes to the construction long-distance power transmission lines, which are a key bottleneck for solar power right now.
Ten years ago, we wrote a funded $2M EPA grant to train solar-panel installers: so the idea has been around for a long time, under the aegis of different federal departments. The Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) is the sub-agency responsible for the the Advancing Equity program. There are 16 grants available for the 2022 competition, with $10 million available and an award ceiling of $1.5 million.
Any organization that does job training or workforce development should be interested in applying for this grant program: although most workforce development grants originate in the Department of Labor (DOL), this one is from the Department of Energy. I’d expect to see more job training programs run through the DOE and EPA, too, especially since most solar panels must be installed by hand, which implies a massive workforce to do the installing. Many grant programs are stashed in unexpected federal departments, and this is an example of that general tendency.
Overall, however, it’s strange to see a job-training program put into research-and-implementation legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. There is even a “Concept Paper” required, despite the fact that job-training programs have existed for decades and likely will exist for decades more. I guess there’s some nexus between pure research and development with job training, but it must be a pretty small one, and the FOA mentions that “Proposals focused on manufacturing for solar PV modules and other equipment will be considered, but it is not expected to be the primary area of focus for the funding program.” The word “it” is strange in that sentence: the writer should have said something like: “but manufacturing proposals are not expected to be the primary area of focus.”
As noted in the preceding paragraphs, like other Department of Energy Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE) FOAs, this one requires a Concept Paper, and applicants will get some feedback based on their Concept Papers. I’m not sure how reviewers will deal with Concept Papers—there isn’t really any technical risk in these—but I guess they’ll need to have some way of doing so.
We’ve also discovered that some of the required documents posted online by the DOE for this program are corrupted. Once we’ve got good copies of the corrupted documents, we’ll update this page.
The word “equity” may be trendy today, but we’ve been working on job-training programs for low-income and persons of color since Seliger + Associates’ inception three decades ago, and we expect to be working on job-training programs long after “equity” has been replaced by whatever word comes next. So don’t be confused: the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law: Advancing Equity through Workforce Partnerships” is another garden-variety job-training program. We’ve worked on numerous such projects; call us at 800.540.8906 ext. 1, or send an email to [email protected]. We’ll write your entire Advancing Equity proposal or edit your draft for a reasonable flat fee.