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…]