WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced nearly $16 million in funding to help businesses move promising energy technologies from the DOE’s National Laboratories to the marketplace. This department-wide round of funding through the Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) will support 54 projects at 12 national labs involving 52 private-sector partners.

The TCF is administered by the DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions (OTT), which works to expand the commercial impact of the DOE’s portfolio of research, development, demonstration, and deployment activities. In February 2016, OTT announced the first solicitation to the DOE National Laboratories for TCF funding proposals. It received 104 applications from across the laboratory system for projects in two topic areas:

• Topic Area 1: Projects for which additional technology maturation is needed to attract a private partner; and

• Topic Area 2: Cooperative development projects between a lab and industry partner(s) designed to bolster the commercial application of a lab developed technology.

All projects selected for the TCF will receive an equal amount of non-federal funds to match the federal investment.

“Deploying new clean energy technologies is an essential part of our nation’s effort to lead in the 21st century economy and in the fight against climate change,” said Lynn Orr, undersecretary, science and energy, DOE. “The funds announced today will help to accelerate the commercialization of cutting-edge energy technologies developed in our national labs, making them more widely available to American consumers and businesses.”

These first department-wide TCF selections will expand the DOE’s efforts to catalyze the commercial impact of today’s portfolio of research, development, demonstration, and deployment activities to increase return on investment from federally funded research and to give more Americans access to cutting-edge energy technologies.

A list of TCF selections, as well as the Topic Area 2 projects and their private sector partners, can be found at http://bit.ly/DOE-Tech-Transitions.

Publication date: 8/1/2016

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