Oak Ridge Today

DOE announces $16 million in funding to move energy technologies from labs to marketplace

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory Sign

Photo by ORNL

 

The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced nearly $16 million in funding to help businesses move promising energy technologies from DOE’s national laboratories to the marketplace. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is among the labs receiving funding, and ORNL received funding for nine projects.

It’s the first department-wide round of funding through the Technology Commercialization Fund, or TCF, a press release said. It will support 54 projects at 12 national labs involving 52 private-sector partners.

The TCF is administered by DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions, or OTT, which works to expand the commercial impact of DOE’s portfolio of research, development, demonstration, and deployment activities, the press release said. In February 2016, OTT announced the first solicitation to the DOE national laboratories for TCF funding proposals. It received 104 applications from across the laboratory system, for projects in two topic areas:

  • Topic Area 1: Projects for which the technology must become more mature to attract a private partner; and
  • Topic Area 2: Cooperative development projects between a lab and industry partner(s), designed to support the commercial application of a lab-developed technology.

All projects selected for the Technology Commercialization Fund will receive an equal amount of non-federal funds to match the federal investment, the press release said.

“Deploying new clean energy technologies is an essential part of our nation’s effort to lead in the 21st century economy and in the fight against climate change,” said Lynn Orr, DOE’s under secretary for science and energy. “The funds announced today will help to accelerate the commercialization of cutting-edge energy technologies developed in our national labs, making them more widely available to American consumers and businesses.” [Read more…]

ORNL awarded two Energy Frontier Research Centers

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David Wesolowski and Yanwen Zhang

Pictured above are David Wesolowski, left, director of the Fluid Interface Reactions, Structures, and Transport Center; and Yanwen Zhang, director of the Energy Dissipation to Defect Evolution Center. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

Oak Ridge National Laboratory will be home to two Energy Frontier Research Centers announced this week by U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The Department of Energy awarded a total of $100 million to 32 EFRC projects to accelerate the scientific breakthroughs needed to build the 21st-century energy economy. 

“Today, we are mobilizing some of our most talented scientists to join forces and pursue the discoveries and breakthroughs that will lay the foundation for our nation’s energy future,” Secretary Moniz said. “The funding we’re announcing today will help fuel scientific and technological innovation.”

The two ORNL EFRCs are a renewal of the Fluid Interface Reactions, Structures, and Transport (FIRST) Center, which is led by David Wesolowski, and a new award to the Energy Dissipation to Defect Evolution (EDDE) Center, led by Yanwen Zhang.

ORNL scientists also partnered on successful proposals to lay the groundwork for fundamental advances in solar energy, electrical energy storage, carbon capture and sequestration, materials and chemistry by design, biosciences, and extreme environments. Those proposals include three new projects (led by the Georgia Institute of Technology, the State University of New York–Stony Brook, and Pennsylvania State University) and three renewals (led by Washington University in St. Louis, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). [Read more…]