The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) from the Department of Energy has announced a total of 60 projects for $156 million across 25 states in the US. The projects focus on improving the production and usage of energy by the US.
To be more specific, the projects are aimed at the areas of grid control, biofuels, solar power electronics, thermal storage and rare earth. ARPA-E announced that 11 of its projects have already generated a total private capital investments of up to $200 million.
Of all the projects granted, 50% have been awarded to universities, 23% to small businesses, 13% to national labs, 12% to large-scale businesses and 2% non-profit organisations. Before the announcement of these projects, ARPA-E has funded around 120 energy research projects with a total of $365.7 million across seven fields. The addition of these projects has increased the agency’s funding to $521.7 million for a total of 180 projects in 12 fields.
A few examples of the projects granted are engineering of plants to create biofuels, usage of rare earth materials in important technologies, high energy thermal storage, network integration of green electricity, power convertors, effective delivery of solar electricity and increasing production of turpentine, which is a natural biofuel obtained from pine trees.
Source: http://www.bnl.gov