New Program Lowers Barriers for Small Businesses and Other Non-traditional Partners to Receive Support as They Work to Commercialize New Energy Technologies
Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Technology Transitions (OTT), in collaboration with the Offices of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) and Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), today announced the new Voucher Program, which will provide $27.5 million in in-kind commercialization support to organizations that have a role in bringing innovative energy technologies to market nation-wide. This new program is funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as part of the Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF).
“Taking a technology from research and development to a marketable and economically viable product can be very challenging,” said DOE Chief Commercialization Officer and Director of the Office of Technology Transitions Dr. Vanessa Z. Chan. “The Voucher Program will connect and provide businesses with the resources necessary to overcome barriers to commercialization and ultimately deliver more clean energy solutions into the private sector.”
The Voucher Program leverages DOE’s recent partnership intermediary agreement with ENERGYWERX. ENERGYWERX will work directly with program participants and facilitate the third-party support needed to accelerate commercialization of their clean energy technology.
This program will lower barriers for small businesses, non-traditional partners, and other organizations from underrepresented communities that may face difficulties accessing testing facilities or obtaining expensive third-party subject matter expertise needed to advance their technologies, business, or energy projects to the next level. The Voucher Program currently offers four categories of in-kind support, with the potential for more to be added in the future:
Pre-Demonstration Commercialization Support: addresses key adoption risk areas faced by companies already funded by DOE that are moving on from the research and development stage. This support includes bankability studies, manufacturing or supply chain assessments, community benefits assessments, and other technoeconomic analyses.
Performance Validation, Modeling, and Certification Support: enables third-party evaluation of technology performance under certification-relevant operating conditions, accelerated lifetime testing to test for potential failure types, and access to advanced modeling and digitization resources. This support is invited for companies that have a product prototype for a technology that is in alignment with the interest of DOE OCED or EERE.
Clean Energy Demonstration Project Siting/Permitting Support: helps authorities having jurisdiction like city or tribal governments understand new clean energy technology benefits and challenges, evaluate siting and permitting best practices developed by similar jurisdictions, develop streamlined permitting processes, and support community engagement on related issues.
EERE Commercialization Support: provides market research, business plan, fundraising road-mapping (from both public and private sources), and other commercialization strategy assistance for companies who have received funding from DOE EERE research and development programs and have a functional technology prototype.
DOE intends to open the program for submissions later in summer 2023. Subsequent updates and announcements for the program will be posted on energywerx.org. Sign up for updates at the ENERGYWERX website.
About the Department of Energy Office of Technology Transitions
The Department of Energy Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) is one of the largest supporters of technology commercialization in the federal government. Founded in 2015, OTT bolsters the technology industry’s market skills and enables clean energy technologies to progress through research, development, demonstration, and to deployment into the private sector to meet our nation’s climate goals. Visit us at energy.gov/technologytransitions to learn more, and subscribe to receive our latest opportunities and accomplishments via email. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Contacts:
Media: OTT@hq.doe.gov
Program: info@energywerx.org
Originally Published by the Department of Energy, Office of Technology Transitions
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