The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced nearly $10 million to 20 small businesses working on forward-thinking energy technology, which could significantly reduce U.S. energy consumption.
The support to small businesses across the country is part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Exploratory Topic Supporting Entrepreneurial Energy Discoveries (SEED).
“SEED support to small businesses is one of the most exciting ways ARPA-E drives high-risk, high reward energy innovation,” said ARPA-E Acting Director Dr. Jennifer Gerbi. “These SEED selectees—small businesses and budding entrepreneurs—have disruptive, potentially game-changing ideas about how we can generate, store and use energy. These are exactly the sort of transformative ideas ARPA-E was created to encourage.”
The 20 SEED Exploratory Topic selectees announced today span a wide range of technical areas, including making biofuels in fundamentally new ways; efficiently extracting, concentrating and purifying critical metals and rare earth elements; producing sustainable aviation fuels and renewable diesel; and developing data center cooling systems.
Successful SEED projects should create new paradigms in energy technology and have the potential to increase U.S. energy efficiency, reduce energy imports, or cut energy emissions. SEED performers are intended to establish potential new areas for technology development and provide ARPA-E with information that could lead to new ARPA-E focused funding programs.
SEED performers may conduct exploratory research to establish concept viability, seek to provide proof-of-concept demonstration for a new technology, or created modeling and simulation to guide energy technology development.