November 22, 2022
BY Erin Krueger
The Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Joe Biden in August, allocated nearly $20 billion to support climate-smart agriculture. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service is now seeking comments inform how it will implement those funds.
The NRCS on Nov. 21 published a notice in the Federal Register opening a public comment period focused on the implementation of IRA funds to support the deployment of climate-smart practices on U.S. farms, ranches and forestlands through its four Farm Bill conservation programs. NCRS is also requesting input on funding to quantify carbon sequestration and carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions at the field scale.
The NRCS said it specifically interested in public input and recommendations that it can use to improve, expand, and/or build on scientifically designed quantification systems to monitor and quantify improvements in soil carbon, reductions in nitrogen losses, and the reduction, capture, avoidance or sequestration of carbon dioxide, methane, or nitrous oxide emissions, associated with agricultural production.
Advertisement
The comment period is open through Dec. 21. Additional information is available on the Federal Register website.
Advertisement
The U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) announced up to $23 million in funding to support research and development (R&D) of domestic chemicals and fuels from biomass and waste resources.
The U.S. DOE has announced its intent to issue funding to support high-impact research and development (R&D) projects in two priority areas: sustainable propane and renewable chemicals and algal system cultivation and preprocessing.
Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., in August introduced the Renewable Chemicals Act, a bill that aims to create a tax credit to support the production of biobased chemicals.
The Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium, a consortium of the U.S. DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office, has launched an effort that aims to gather community input on the development of new biomass processing facilities.
USDA on March 8 celebrated the second annual National Biobased Products Day, a celebration to raise public awareness of biobased products, their benefits and their contributions to the U.S. economy and rural communities.