Out of the lab and into the fire: Driving cutting-edge tech to market

February 5, 2016 | By

As part of a continued push to encourage energy innovation and commercialization, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) has issued its first solicitation for proposals that help bring cutting-edge energy technologies to market.

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This year, the OTT's Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) has been infused with $20 million to advance energy-related technologies with commercial potential and help strengthen partnerships between the national labs and private sector companies that can deploy energy technologies to the marketplace.

The TCF will enhance DOE's technology transitions system with a forward-looking and competitive approach to lab-industry partnerships where funds will be matched by private partners to promote promising energy technologies for commercial purposes. TCF funds will be used to match 50 percent of non-federal funds from private partners.

This funding opportunity expands upon DOE's efforts to catalyze the commercial impact of the Department's portfolio of research, development, demonstration, and deployment activities to increase return on investment from federally funded research.

"Every day our national labs are developing innovative new technologies that have the potential to revolutionize the way we generate, store, and transmit energy," said Jetta Wong, director of the Office of Technology Transitions. "But in order to accelerate the use of clean energy technologies, we need to get more of these breakthroughs out of our labs and into our marketplace. The launch of this fund is an important milestone for OTT as it approaches its one-year anniversary and demonstrates our efforts to expand the commercial impact of DOE's research and development portfolio."

Historically, the national labs have laid the research and development foundation for many technologies in the marketplace today, including the batteries powering electric vehicles, the foundation of Internet servers, and even the optical digital recording technology behind DVDs.

Originally established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the TCF also complements DOE's efforts within Mission Innovation -- a multi-national pledge to double clean energy research and development within five years and drive technologies to market.

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