NSF Global Centers

April 14th, 2023

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) Global Centers Program is an ambitious new initiative to fund international, interdisciplinary collaborative research centers that will apply best practices of broadening participation and community engagement to develop use-inspired/applied research on climate change and clean energy. Australian researchers will join with partners in the US and other countries to mitigate climate change impacts and develop clean energy solutions.

Funding and Duration

The expected award duration is four to five years. NSF anticipates making awards of up to USD $5 million each, with international funding agencies expected to support roughly comparable effort by their own researchers. The total funding from CSIRO will be at a maximum of AUD $7m over five years for Australian participants in the Global Centers. There is no minimum or maximum grant amount, but grants cannot exceed the amount of available funds and there is an expectation that grants will be in the vicinity of AUD $ 3 to 7 million in total per project

Pathways to net zero

CSIRO seeks proposals that directly address the challenge of lowering carbon emissions whilst building regional energy and resource security by directly identifying decarbonization (emission reduction) options and pathways along with their interaction with land use, economy, and socio-economic values. Of particular interest are approaches to downscaling to sub-regional areas, and intercomparison of approaches to anticipating impacts.

Net zero regional transitions

CSIRO seeks proposals that can help identify approaches and frameworks that identify opportunities and vulnerabilities of regions and precincts in net zero transition and in particular that support:

  • Innovation and market support mechanisms (including enabling digital technologies) for net zero precinct and region transitions;
  • Comparative analysis of governance arrangements and how these affect success, resilience and equity;
  • Typologies and analytics that identify readiness of regions to transition and expose the aspect of support (for example leadership, industry options, capital etc) that could improve success

All proposals aligned with the Pathways to Net Zero or Net Zero Regional Transitions themes should contain a section that clearly describes how the proposed solution is complementary to CSIRO’s Towards Net Zero Mission.

If you are interested in collaborating with CSIRO on a project aligned to one of these themes, contact Warren Flentje (industry decarbonisation) or Jody Bruce (regional transitions).

Further reading: National Science Foundation Global Centers – CSIRO

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