The United States solar industry experienced a 6.7 percent drop in total employment during 2020, a reflection of the difficulties that the COVID-19 pandemic caused in some parts of the manufacturing and construction sectors.
Over $1 billion has been awarded for the creation of 12 new quantum information services (QIS) and artificial intelligence (AI) research institutes across the country over the course of the next five years, according to an announcement from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation.
Congress has passed a budget for FY 2017 that largely continues support for federal innovation programs and R&D investments. Among the highlights are $17 million for Regional Innovation Strategies (a $2 million increase over FY 2016), level funding of $130 million for the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership and $5 million for SBA’s clusters program. In reviewing dozens of line items, offices that had received significant cuts in the White House’s skinny budget appear to receive some of the largest funding increases (such as the Appalachian Regional Commission, Community Development Block Grant and ARPA-E). However, with the exception of multi-billion dollar increases for Department of Defense R&D, many increases are rather small in terms of overall dollars. This is, at least in part, a reflection of non-defense spending caps rising by only $40 million for FY 2017, limiting the availability of new funds. In this context, science and innovation gains are particularly impressive, with a five percent overall increase for federal R&D that particularly benefits NASA and NIH.
The Obama administration announced winners of the Advanced Manufacturing Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge on Tuesday. The challenge — publicized earlier this year — is one of the key initiatives of the interagency Taskforce for the Advancement of Regional Innovation Clusters and is sponsored by a partnership between the U.S. Department of Commerce, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Departments of Energy and Labor, and the Small Business Administration.
Unless Congress and the White House take action by the end of the year, across-the-board spending reductions will go into effect for all federal agencies as a result of provisions in the Budget Control Act of 2011. The budget sequestration would reduce defense discretionary funding by 9.4 percent and non-defense funding by 8.2 percent from the 2011 baseline.
In a move to strengthen the domestic manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), announced $2.8 billion for 20 companies in 12 states to extract and process battery materials and manufacture components while creating good-paying jobs.
President Joe Biden has signed the Inflation Reduction Act, a $740-billion bill that largely focuses on clean energy and climate resiliency, deficit reduction and health care, funded through tax changes.
This week, the Senate energy committee discussed new funding for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) implementation of hydrogen research and development projects using funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The infrastructure act provides DOE with $8 billion to create four regional clean hydrogen hubs, as well as $1 billion for clean hydrogen electrolysis demonstration projects and $500 million for R&D on the manufacturing processes and recycling methods for clean hydrogen development.
Earlier this week, House Democrats released its version of a wide-ranging innovation policy bill.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $60 million in funding for its largest-ever cohort of university-based Industrial Assessment Centers (IACs) to assist small- and medium-sized manufacturers in reducing their carbon emissions and lowering energy costs.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced over $30 million in federal funding, matched by over $35 million in private sector funds, for 68 projects that will accelerate the commercialization of promising energy technologies. The awards are expected to help transfer solutions from the National Labs to the marketplace and work toward the president’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The U.S. Department of Energy announced more than $123 million across 46 awards to projects supporting manufacturing innovation. About half of the funds are going to efficiency improvements in manufacturing processes, with the remainder split between improving chemical manufacturing and supporting more efficient facilities and systems. SSTI members included among the project awardees include Argonne National Lab, Sandia National Lab, University of Cincinnati, University of Michigan, and the University of Tennessee.
Near the end of 2020, Congress passed the FY 2021 defense authorization (overriding a presidential veto) and folded multiple policy bills into the joint appropriations and coronavirus relief bill. This legislation includes new authorizations for semiconductor research facilities, clean and renewable energy innovation, and new studies of assets for critical research areas.
Innovation-related policies within the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2021 include the following:
The Advanced Manufacturing Program within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy awarded nearly $140 million to companies and universities in 25 states and the District of Columbia to support 55 advanced manufacturing research projects. Recipients are contributing an additional $47.8 million toward project costs. Projects received an average of $2.5 million, but range from $400,000 to $12 million. The accompanying map presents the distribution of awards across the country and brief details on each recipient.
Emerging over the past five years, novel approaches to supporting early-stage cleantech development have the potential to ease the transition from invention to marketplace, according to new research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center for the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis. The report provides a comparison of some of the nation’s most notable cleantech incubators and accelerators, finding that each organization fills a unique niche and competition among them is not an issue.
This week, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $70 million for a Clean Energy Manufacturing Innovation Institute to develop technologies that will advance U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, energy efficiency, and innovation. This institute will focus on early-stage research for advancing cybersecurity in energy efficient manufacturing.
American Made Solar Challenge is seeking teams of creative individuals and entrepreneurs to compete for prize money and strategic support in accelerating ideas and solutions. In a three-part series of contests, $3 million will be awarded in cash prizes and up to $525,000 in vouchers, which can be used at national laboratories and other voucher facilities to develop, test and validate ideas in the energy marketplace.
A new report from the Department of Energy (DOE) highlights examples of major scientific accomplishments emerging from 40 years of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) research support, including how these discoveries have helped fulfill DOE’s mission and have led to new technologies and industries that contribute to American innovation and prosperity.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry is calling on Americans’ competitive spirit to help solve critical water issues. Perry led a roundtable discussion last week on the use of federal prizes and challenges to drive innovation in dealing with water issues such as alternative water supplies, reducing water treatment costs, greater efficiency in usage, and advancing market-based solutions that incentivize innovation and cooperation.
The Department of Energy’s annual portfolio of federal funding opportunities (FFOs) — an announcement for the solicitation of research applications on a specific technical area — published on grants.gov declined by more than 45 percent between 2012 and 2017 from 81 FFOs in 2012 to 44 FFOs during the last calendar year. The decline had the most significant impact on the number of FFOs published in technical areas related to renewable energy, energy efficiency, and storage/other energy-related systems.
The Department of Energy’s annual portfolio of federal funding opportunities (FFOs) — an announcement for the solicitation of research applications on a specific technical area — published on grants.gov declined by more than 45 percent between 2012 and 2017 from 81 FFOs in 2012 to 44 FFOs during the last calendar year. The decline had the most significant impact on the number of FFOs published in technical areas related to renewable energy, energy efficiency, and storage/other energy-related systems.
The House Appropriations Committee began releasing FY 2018 “markup” budget bills this week, and the proposals would cut billions in non-defense spending. EDA would lose $100 million* in funding, SBA’s entrepreneurial development programs would lose $34 million, NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership would lose $30 million, and Energy’s ARPA-E would be eliminated, among other cuts.
Although it has been slated for elimination under the president’s proposed budget, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program is making progress toward achieving its statutory mission and goals, and it “cannot reasonably be expected to have completely fulfilled those goals given so few years of operation and the size of its budget.” That is among the findings released this week by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) in its assessment of ARPA-E. The project was overseen by the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) and was tasked with assessing ARPA-E’s progress toward achieving its statutory mission and goals, and determining whether it is on a trajectory to achieve them. In short, the answer is that it is.
The president’s FY 2018 budget request would provide $28.0 billion in total funding for the Department of Energy, a $2.7 billion (8.9 percent) decrease from the FY 2017 omnibus. Notably, the proposed budget would eliminate the ARPA-E program, which received $306 million as part of the FY 2017 omnibus. The proposed budget “refocuses the Department’s energy and science programs on early-stage research and development (R&D) at the national laboratories to advance American primacy in scientific and energy research in an efficient and cost effective manner,” according to the DOE.
Innovation in the energy sector requires strong leadership from the federal government to help mitigate potential risks, according to a recent report by the American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC), a project of the Bipartisan Policy Center. The AEIC is a group of ten private sector leaders that includes Bill Gates, the heads of industry giants like Dominion Energy and Southern Company, and retired leaders of corporations such as Lockheed Martin and DuPont.
The U.S. Department of Energy recently released the State of the Department of Energy National Laboratories Report, which reads like a user manual for the National Labs. For readers with questions about what the labs are, what they are trying to achieve, and how they work with other institutions, the report is an excellent resource. As depicted in the visual accompanying this article, DOE’s labs cover a variety of purposes, enabling the report to provide more generalizable information on the labs than might be possible from another agency. Sections detail DOE’s strategic plan for the labs, scientific objectives, partnership structures and tech transfer initiatives, among others. Each section includes case studies or anecdotes of lab activities and numerous appendices provide additional background.