Earlier this month, the Advanced Projects Research Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) released a $150 million funding opportunity open to all breakthrough energy technologies. Individual awards under the Open FOA will range between $250,000 and $10 million. According to the announcement:

To address the challenges imposed by the rapidly evolving global energy market, ARPA-E seeks to support transformational research in all areas of energy R&D, including resource identification, extraction, transportation and use, and energy generation, storage, transmission and use in both the transportation and stationary power sectors. Areas of research responsive to this FOA include (but are not limited to) electricity generation by both renewable and non-renewable means, electricity transmission, storage, and distribution; energy efficiency for buildings, manufacturing and commerce, and personal use; and all aspects of transportation, including the production and distribution of both renewable and non-renewable fuels, electrification, and energy efficiency in transportation [more after the jump].

 

The result of a successful ARPA-E project will be such that at the end of the project the transformational technology will be sufficiently advanced and well defined in terms of performance and risk to promote next-stage development or transfer of the project to next-stage developers. Projects under this FOA must be aimed at more than progress toward identified project goals; the project must be aimed atactual delivery of these project goals. The R&D effort on later-stage technology development projects must carry the risk reduction process for the technology to the point at which entrepreneurial decisions can be made with confidence.

Letters of intent are due by 5pm EDT on March 30th, and concept papers pursuant to a published template should be received by 5pm EDT on April 12th.

The funding announcement comes on the heels of the third annual ARPA-E Innovation Summit. Held outside Washington, DC, on Feb. 27-29, the summit featured over 100 speakers — including former President Bill Clinton, Microsoft Founder and Chairman Bill Gates, Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, MIT President Susan Hockfield, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, and ARPA-E Director Arun Majumdar — and attracted nearly 2,500 attendees.

Among the sessions: “A Revolution in Information and Energy,” describing how lessons from the information technology revolution should inform the future of energy technology. The panel was moderated by Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, and featured Anita Jones, University Professor Emerita of Computer Science at the University of Virginia and a member of the CCC Council; Shwetak Patel, Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington; George Rittenhouse, Chief Operating Officer, Software, Services, and Solutions Group, Alcatel-Lucent; and Shankar Sastry, Roy W. Carlson Professor and Dean of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. The panel also discussed how the information and communication technology industry could address the energy issues it faces.

To learn more about the Open FOA, check it out here. And view the ARPA-E Innovation Summit agenda, plus videos of some of the talks, here.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)