Innovators and entrepreneurs will lead us to a clean-energy future

Proof that Americans are innovative, creative, and hard-working is evident across the U.S. economy, but I see it every day in the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). As we have for decades, EERE supports people who develop exceptional ideas for addressing our shared clean energy challenges. Specifically, EERE supports projects that advance in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainable transportation to deliver affordable, reliable energy for all.

American innovators and entrepreneurs are the problem solvers we need to accelerate the clean energy transition. We enable them to advance their new technologies through funding, training, and research opportunities. Let me explain what that looks like.

·        Funding: We regularly issue funding opportunities through each of our 11 technology offices, as well as the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) programs. This funding comes from congressional appropriations of your taxpayer dollars and from last year’s unprecedented climate legislation. Diverse groups of innovators submit proposals with ideas and plans for clean energy solutions, and we invest in the ones that show the most promise. By last fall, EERE had passed the milestone of $1 billion invested in clean energy technologies since January 2021.

·        World-Class Resources: DOE’s 17 national labs have state-of-the-art facilities, tools, and expertise needed to translate research and study into impactful change. As an example, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is leading the new Clean Energy to Communities Program, an effort across all the national labs to help connect local governments, electric utilities, community-based groups, and others with the labs’ innovative modeling and testing tools. This $40 million program will provide the type and amount of support communities require to meet their unique needs to help them transition to a clean energy economy.

·         Technical Assistance: EERE offers technical assistance to communities; local, tribal, and state governments; building professionals; manufacturers; utility companies and others to help them form realistic plans for how to improve their energy infrastructure. This assistance comes in various forms, depending on the recipients’ wants and needs. This includes remote, island and islanded communities, who receive in-kind support from the Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project, often consisting of analysis, planning and implementation assistance.

·        Developing our Brain Trust: Through initiatives like the Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program, the Clean Energy Innovator Fellowship, and various prizes and competitions designed to incentivize entrepreneurial innovators, EERE pairs up innovators with experts across DOE, the national labs, incubators, and more, to advance clean energy solutions and careers.

These efforts help strengthen the American power system’s resilience, improve community health and safety, and create good-paying jobs, but clean energy still faces challenges on multiple fronts. Innovators everywhere are navigating current and potential regulations, solving engineering and logistical challenges, and liaising with state and local officials. EERE equips clean energy organizations with the tools, knowledge, funding, and insights that help them streamline their focus on the challenges of field-testing technologies, scaling up solutions, and developing technologies that will transition us to a net-zero-emissions economy by 2050.

#NationalEshipWeek may have ended, but our work to support the innovators and entrepreneurs driving our clean energy technology forward is far from over. So I’d like to thank our partners in progress for their commitment: Because of the passion and innovative ideas of the many thousands of Americans working to deliver new and impactful climate solutions, and through the hard work of their partners in the federal government, there is strong momentum behind our push to solidify America’s position at the vanguard of the battle against climate change.

Ultimately, there’s been a huge amount of deployment, but that doesn’t mean R&D is done. We’re deploying as many of the best technologies as we can now, but we want to stay ahead of what’s coming, too. The long-term goal for decarbonization is going to require a lot of innovation. If you have an innovative idea or solution that supports our clean energy future, view our funding opportunities, prizes, and competitions and see which ones might be right for you.