Federal Announcements

The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a plan that will boost biomass supply chain resiliency for domestic biobased product manufacturing, while also advancing environmental sustainability and market opportunities for small and mid-sized producers.

The U.S. General Services Administration today announced details of its plan to invest over $1 billion through the President’s Investing in America agenda to modernize dozens of federal Land Ports of Entry (LPOE) while boosting domestic clean manufacturing and sustainable technologies. Funding through the Inflation Reduction Act will allow 38 LPOE projects to utilize clean construction materials and state-of-the-art sustainable technologies.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recognized 103 U.S. manufacturing plants that earned the agency’s ENERGY STAR certification in 2023, a designation reserved for manufacturing plants in the top 25% of energy efficiency in their sector. Together, these plants prevented more than 8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to the emissions from the electricity use of more than 1.5 million American homes.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced nearly $5 million from the Industrial Assessment Centers (IAC) Implementation Grants program for 37 small- and medium-sized manufacturers across the country to implement improvements at facilities that will save energy and reduce carbon pollution, to advance the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to tackle the climate crisis.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology plans to announce an open competition for a new Manufacturing USA institute focused on using artificial intelligence to improve the resilience of U.S. manufacturing. NIST anticipates that $70 million in federal funds will be invested in this new institute over five years, with an equal or greater contribution from private and other nonfederal funding sources.

The Department of Defense announced an award of $11.7 million via the Defense Production Act Investment Program to Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense (EBAD) that will provide additional printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) production capacity at their Simsbury, CT location. EBAD will increase existing capacity and manufacturing processes to reduce cost and accelerate PCBA production.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking today to discontinue its general waiver of Buy America requirements for manufactured products used in federal-aid highway projects. In the rulemaking, the agency proposes discontinuing the waiver and creating standards that would apply to manufactured products if the waiver is discontinued.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced the appointments of 30 members to serve on the Advisory Committee on Apprenticeship to advise the Secretary of Labor on issues related to the national apprenticeship system. Through their work on the committee, members will leverage their knowledge and experience to provide advice and recommendations on ways to use the apprenticeship training model to improve equitable access to career pathways for America’s workers and jobseekers.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced a new $24 million funding opportunity for workforce training programs with a focus on training in clean energy jobs that do not require a four-degree.

The Biden-Harris Administration announced that the U.S. Department of Commerce and GlobalFoundries (GF) have signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms (PMT) to provide approximately $1.5 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS and Science Act to strengthen U.S. domestic supply chain resilience, bolster U.S. competitiveness in current-generation and mature-node (C&M) semiconductor production, and support economic and national security capabilities.