Systems for Monitoring and Analytics for Renewable Transportation Fuels from Agricultural Resources and Management (SMARTFARM) Agency Overview:
The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), an organization within the Department of Energy (DOE), is chartered by Congress in the America

credit:

COMPETES Act of 2007 (P.L.

110-69), as amended by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L.

111-358) to:
“(A) to enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies that result in— (i) reductions of imports of energy from foreign sources; (ii) reductions of energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; and (iii) improvement in the energy efficiency of all economic sectors; and (B) to ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies.” ARPA-E issues this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) under the programmatic authorizing statute codified at 42 U.S.C.

§ 1653 8.

The FOA and any awards made under this FOA are subject to 2 C.F.R.

Part 200 as amended by 2 C.F.R.

Part 91 0.

ARPA-E funds research on and the development of high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment.

The agency focuses on technologies that can be meaningfully advanced with a modest investment over a defined period of time in order to catalyze the translation from scientific discovery to early-stage technology.

For the latest news and information about ARPA-E, its programs and the research projects currently supported, see:
http://arpa-e.energy.gov/.

Program Overview:
U.

S.

agriculture has the potential to produce ~5 Quadrillion Btu of energy in the form of biofuels, and with new innovations throughout the biofuel supply chain, these fuels could become carbon negative.

Reaching this potential and achieving greater carbon reductions requires that feedstock producers adopt new technologies and management practices that simultaneously improve yield, drive down production associated emissions, and enhance carbon sequestration in soils.

To facilitate the adoption of these new technologies and practices for improved carbon management, feedstock producers need incentives beyond yield.

While carbon management incentive structures exist elsewhere in the biofuel supply chain, they do not extend to feedstock production because monitoring and verification of feedstock production emissions is too costly to conduct at the field level.

Instead, all feedstock producers are assumed to produce the same amount of emissions— the national average —despite significant variations in actual emissions when moving to state or regional averages, let alone field-level estimates.

The objective of the Systems for Monitoring and Analytics for Renewable Transportation Fuels from Agricultural Resources and Management (SMARTFARM) program is to bridge the data gap in the biofuel supply chain by funding the development of technologies that can replace national averages and emissions factors for feedstock-related emissions with field-level estimates.

The value of such technologies will be evaluated by their ability to reliably, accurately (i.e.

low uncertainty), and cost-effectively quantify feedstock production lifecycle emissions (in g CO2e/acre) at the field level (i.e.

scalable to >80 acres).

If successful, the technologies funded by this phase of the SMARTFARM program will catalyze new market incentives for efficiency in feedstock production and carbon management, reducing annual U.

S.

emissions by ~1%, and with substantially greater potential emissions reductions implications if expanded to other agricultural products beyond biofuels.