The U.S. Department of Commerce and NOAA are launching the Ocean-Based Climate Resilience Accelerators program, a $60 million investment in coastal resilience and American small businesses. The program, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, will foster public-private partnerships to help support small businesses that are developing sustainable technologies geared toward climate resilience to attract capital, mature their technologies and scale their business models for climate impact.

NOAA will invest in business accelerators that bring together stakeholders to understand how ocean observation technologies and information services can support solutions to specific climate resilience challenges, and foster sustainable business models geared toward climate resilience.

The program will form partnerships with and fund eligible U.S.-based organizations to develop business accelerators to identify and support small businesses across ocean-based climate resilience theme areas to attract capital, mature their technologies, and scale their business models for climate impact and economic prosperity. Those theme areas are: 

• Ocean-based renewable energy.
• Coastal and ocean carbon sequestration monitoring and accounting.
• Hazard mitigation and coastal resilience.
• Ecosystems services, including change detection, change analysis and change adaptation and mitigation.
• Other ocean, coastal and Great Lakes-based climate resilience theme areas as determined by the applicant.

The program is a two-phase competitive funding opportunity. Phase one, open for applications through September 11, 2023, will fund selected projects with up to $250,000 per project for accelerator program design. The second phase of the competition will invite all applicants selected in phase one to apply for funding of up to $10 million each to implement their program design.

The notice of funding opportunity can be found here.