President Obama has recently been talking about his plan to “Win the Future.” Whether it’s taking steps to reform our education system, rebuilding our infrastructure, or encouraging breakthroughs in technology, the phrase is about marshaling the country’s best and brightest to solve today’s problems. As the President put it, “To win the future, we (more…)

Sometimes when one gets so focused on the daily tasks at hand, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture around us. But when you take a step back, it is an impressive canvass. Thanks to the hard work of everyone at the Department of Energy over the past year, we’ve made remarkable progress in laying the foundation for a new energy future, advancing groundbreaking (more…)

With the recent “shellacking” (as President Obama referred to the election results) of the Democratically controlled Congress, much of the buzz in the cleantech space has been doom and gloom. Is cleantech doomed to a new dark age? I do not believe so.

Energy policy is one area where there is an (more…)

America is at a “Sputnik moment”, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu said today, and the government’s next moves will determine whether the country leads the global cleantech race or loses it to China.

“This is the threat that I see,” Chu said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. “The U.S. still has the (more…)

Macroalgae grown off the coast of Norway will provide the material for the production of “renewable, sustainable and low cost” ethanol.

Berkeley-based Bio Architecture Lab (BAL) and Statoil, an offshore oil and gas producer with a presence in 40 countries, have announced a partnership whereby Statoil will provide direct funding for R&D (more…)

The stimulus bill along with the $31B cleantech element focused on grants and loan guarantees through the Department of Energy was passed into law over 18 months ago. About a year ago I wrote about how the cleantech stimulus was not very stimulating to our economy. I suggested at that time that the goals of stimulus and of long-term investment are (more…)

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is pursuing transformational solutions to our energy problems.  Part of the Department of Energy, ARPA-E is modeled after the famed DARPA program at the Department of Defense that led to the internet, GPS, stealth airplane technology, and many other success stories.   At ARPA-E, we are trying (more…)

The U.S. Department of Energy will pump $151 million into 37 innovative energy-related research projects through a new federal agency modeled after the Defense Department program that helped commercialize microchips and the Internet.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or Arpa-e, created in 2007 to support innovative and often-experimental projects, selected the first round of grant recipients from 3,600 proposals.

While many of the ideas may never lead to practical breakthroughs, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said some could have a “transformative impact.”

Among the first grant recipients are University of Minnesota researchers attempting to develop an organism that uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide to sugars and diesel fuel; a Massachusetts Institute of Technology team developing an all-liquid metal battery that could better manage the output from intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar; and a United Technologies effort to capture carbon emissions from power plant stacks using enzymes.

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