- Details
- By Tribal Business News Staff
- Energy | Environment
The U.S. Department of Energy will make up to $2.3 million available exclusively for Tribal Colleges and Universities as part of a broader $11.3 million workforce initiative tied to oil, natural gas, coal and geothermal energy industries.
The funding opportunity, announced May 4 by DOE’s Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office and Office of Indian Energy, will support regional academic-industry partnerships through the new Partnerships for Academic-Industry Career Training Initiative, or PACT.
The initiative is designed to help colleges, employers and workforce development groups create or expand hands-on training and credentialing programs tied to domestic energy production and related infrastructure needs.
DOE said the program will fund regional consortia made up of academic institutions, including Tribal colleges, along with industry employers and workforce development organizations. Eligible training areas include operation and maintenance of hydrocarbon and geothermal technologies, produced water treatment and disposal, carbon dioxide use for hydrocarbon recovery, construction trades, artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, geographic information systems, and power generation for data centers and remote operations.
The Tribal college set-aside is intended to help expand workforce pipelines for tribal energy and technical careers, according to DOE.
The initiative will be administered by TechWerx through a Partnership Intermediary Agreement with DOE’s Office of Technology Commercialization. DOE and TechWerx plan to host an informational webinar May 13, followed by office hour sessions in June and July.
