The maximum amount of DOE funding per award under each of the Topic Areas is as follows: (1) $2,000,000 for Topic Area 1; (2) $4,000,000 for Topic Area 2; (3) $2,000,000 for Topic Area 3.a.; and (4) $4,000,000 for Topic Area 3.b. See the Executive Summary (page 1) and Section II.A.1. (page 22) of the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) document. Per the Executive Summary (page 2) and Section III.E., Limitation on Number of Applications Eligible for Review, of the FOA document, “Applicants may submit more than one application to this FOA (including more than one application under a particular Topic Area), provided each application is for a distinctively different project and each application addresses only one Topic Area. Each application must have a distinct title, unique Control Number as assigned by IE-Exchange during the registration process, and be readily distinguishable. Each application must be limited to a single unique and distinct project; unrelated projects cannot be consolidated in a single application.”
Therefore, since an applicant may submit more than one application under a particular Topic Area, there is theoretically no maximum amount that could be requested, provided each application is for a distinctly different project and only addresses one Topic Area.
Under this FOA, cost share is calculated on the total allowable costs of the project (i.e., the sum of the Government share and the Recipient share of allowable costs equals the total allowable cost of the project), not as a percentage of the funds being requested from DOE. See Section III.B. FOA document. Per Section III.B.2 (page 28) of the FOA, “[u]nless DOE approves a requested cost share reduction, all Applicants are required to provide non-federal cost share of at least 20% of the total allowable costs of the project (i.e., the sum of the Government share and the Recipient share of allowable costs equals the total allowable cost of the project). However, per Section III.B.2., a cost share reduction from 20% to 10% may be requested, and if approved, the minimum cost share required would be 10%.
Therefore, based on a 20% cost share and a cumulative request from DOE of $10,000,000, the cost share would be 20% of the total allowable project costs of $12,500,000, or cost share of $2,500,000. To calculate the total allowable project costs, divide the cumulative requested DOE amount ($10,000,000) by the percentage of DOE’s share (80% in this example) and to calculate the amount of cost share, subtract the requested cumulative DOE amount ($10,000,000) from the total allowable project costs ($12,500,000) to obtain the amount of cost share ($12,500,000 - $10,000,000 = $2,500,000). See Appendix A of the FOA document for more on how cost share is calculated.