The Solar Desalination funding program will develop novel technologies or concepts using solar thermal energy to assist in creating freshwater from otherwise unusable waters. Thermal desalination is a potential solution to increase water supplies for municipal water and agriculture, and is an important technology to purify water produced from various industrial processes, including oil and gas production.

Projects in the ARPA-E Rhizosphere Observations Optimizing Terrestrial Sequestration (ROOTS) program seek to develop advanced technologies and crop cultivars that enable a 50 percent increase in soil carbon accumulation while reducing N2O emissions by 50 percent and increasing water productivity by 25 percent.

The IDEAS program - short for Innovative Development in Energy-Related Applied Science - provides a continuing opportunity for the rapid support of early-stage applied research to explore pioneering new concepts with the potential for transformational and disruptive changes in energy technology.

EPA funds climate change research grants to improve knowledge of the health and environment effects of climate change, and provide sustainable solutions for communities to effectively manage and reduce the impacts of a changing climate.

The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center helps solve the nation’s most challenging problems in civil and military engineering, geospatial sciences, water resources, and environmental sciences for the Army, Department of Defense, civilian agencies, and the Nation’s public good.

DARPA’s biological technologies arm focuses on leveraging advances in engineering and information sciences to drive and reshape biotechnology for technological advantage. BTO is responsible for all neurotechnology, human-machine interface, human performance, infectious disease, and synthetic biology programs within the agency.

Projects must be related to the agency's responsibilities for maintaining and improving the viability of marine and coastal ecosystems, for delivering valuable weather, climate, and water information and services, for understanding the science and consequences of climate change, and for supporting the global commerce and transportation upon which we all depend.

WaterSMART Water and Energy Efficiency Grants provide cost-shared funding for projects that save water; increase energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy in water management; support environmental benefits (i.e., make conserved water available instream or otherwise address endangered species issues); mitigate conflict risk in areas at a high risk of future water conflict; and accomplish other benefits that contribute to water supply sustainability in the western United States

The program aims to carry out research on and development and demonstration of:

1. biofuels and biobased products
2. the methods, practices, and technologies, for the production of biofuels and biobased products

The goal of the Environmental Sustainability program is to promote sustainable engineered systems that support human well-being and that are also compatible with sustaining natural (environmental) systems.

Through its Research, Development, and Deployment work, the Office of Energy is pursuing technologies to improve grid reliability, efficiency, flexibility, functionality, and security; and making investments and sponsoring demonstrations aimed at bringing new and innovative technologies to maturity and helping them transition to market.

The Vehicle Technologies Office supports research, development (R&D), and deployment of efficient and sustainable transportation technologies that will improve energy efficiency, fuel economy, and enable America to use less petroleum. 

Some relevant programs under this office include

  BER has been a critical contributor to climate science research in the U.S..The program supports fundamental research and scientific user facilities to address diverse and critical global challenges. BER research advances our understanding of the roles of Earth's biogeochemical systems in determining the climate so that we can predict climate into the future and plan accordingly for our future energy needs.    Some related iCAP projects include

CIS supports fundamental and innovative research necessary for designing, constructing, managing, maintaining, operating and protecting efficient, resilient and sustainable civil infrastructure systems. Research that recognizes the role that these systems play in societal functioning and accounts for how human behavior and social organizations contribute to and affect the performance of these systems is encouraged. 

The overarching goal of INFEWS is to catalyze well-integrated interdisciplinary and convergent research to transform scientific understanding of the Food Energy Water nexus to improve system function and management, address system stress, increase resilience, and ensure sustainability.

This project  involves encouraging more bicycle uses for employees. Packages can be sent out and delivered through the use of a bicycle. Bicycles can also be used for hauling objects to specific locations with the help of special equipment built by the Campus Bike Center.  Student and Staff employees will be involved in the process. 

Anyone that might want to recieve more information or want to see the bicycle in person, contact Lily Wilcock, Active Transportation Coordinator at F&S.

The ICECF 2009 Lighting Retrofit was the second round of the T-12 to T-8 Lighting Retrofit Project. A total of 33,192 T-12 fixtures were replaced with thinner, more energy effiecient T-8 fixtures. This will incur a total Annual KWh  Savings of 5,335,909 hours. Thirty university buildings were involved in this round of the project. The total Simple Payback is estimated to be 1.17.

The 2015 iCAP, chapter 5, objective 2 is "Improve the water efficiency of cooling towers by limiting the amount discharged to sewer to less than 20% of water intake for chiller plant towers, and less than 33% for stand-alone building towers, by FY20." The results of the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center’s True Cost of Water Study yielded five action items and two pilot studie

One potential method for acheiving the 2015 iCAP goal for on-campus solar is to retrofit existing campus buildings with rooftop solar.  The amount of sun shine on each roof, the viability of the building itself, and the funding mechanisms all need to be reviewed and resolved for this idea to be implemented.  The viability for each building includes approval from the Architectural Review Committee, agreement of the building occupant facility leaders, and structural and electrical viability for the building.  As of 2016, the financial payback for solar photovoltaics is not strong enough to ea