The goal of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Energy and Environment program is to inform the societal transition toward low-carbon energy systems in the United States by investigating economic, environmental, technological, and distributional issues. The program looks to achieve its mission by supporting research, training, networking, and dissemination efforts in this domain that shape the direction of scholarship by investigating under-explored questions that warrant further attention, advance collaborative and interdisciplinary research across the social and natural sciences, involve early career faculty and train the next generation of students, link research with practice, and partner with other funders to amplify programmatic impact. The program’s predominant geographic focus is the United States.
The program looks to support research in the following selected topic areas:
- Energy Markets and Policy Analysis: This topic reflects the program’s ongoing and longstanding interest in supporting scholarship that examines issues related to how energy markets function, assesses the impact of energy policies implemented at various levels of government, and thinks about the design and functionality of key institutional mechanisms across the energy system. Electricity generation, transmission, and distribution systems are undergoing rapid transformation and warrant further study to understand how they are likely to evolve in the years ahead.
- Net Zero Innovation and Negative Emissions Technologies: Many recent analyses have suggested that the development and deployment of net zero innovation and negative emissions technologies need to be scaled-up quickly and dramatically. The Foundation looks to help advance activities that examine the factors that contribute to net zero energy innovation and explore both the opportunities and challenges faced by emerging negative emissions technologies.
- Transportation and Mobility: The program is interested in supporting projects that look to understand how transportation and mobility systems are changing. Potential activities could explore a range of questions related to the rise of electrification, autonomous, and shared personal transportation vehicles, in additional to studying how heavy-duty transport, commercial shipping, and the movement of freight might be impacted by these and related developments.
- Energy and Distributional Equity: There is a short supply of research looking to understand how changes in the energy system might have differing impacts on various populations and across different racial, ethnic, or income groups. The program looks to support research that illuminates how changes in the energy system might be better designed to include these populations in a more comprehensive manner.
- Industrial Decarbonization: The program aims to support studies that examine a range of emerging economic, social, policy, and technological developments that offer more promise going forward and help to understand how this component of the energy transition might be accelerated. Additionally, the program is looking to consider research that examines the promise and challenges faced by various developments that could enhance industrial decarbonization, such as the rise of digital economy or distributed manufacturing.
- Energy Systems and Climate Adaptation: While the transition toward low-carbon energy systems is needed to address climate change, recent events have showed that climate change is already having a distinct impact on energy systems. The program seeks to support research that can help better quantify the climate change impacts on different components of energy infrastructure or study how energy systems may need to be redesigned to mitigate against potential climate risks in the future.
Application Deadline: Ongoing
Announcement: https://sloan.org/programs/research/energy-and-environment
