REFUEL Highlights

ARPA-E launched the Renewable Energy to Fuels through Utilization of Energy-dense Liquids (REFUEL) program to develop technologies to convert air and water into Carbon Neutral Liquid Fuels (CNLF). The goal was for CNLF’s developed under REFUEL to be stored, transported, and later converted into hydrogen or electricity to provide power for transportation applications in the same way as currently used petroleum-based fuels.

The Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) today announced up to $70 million in funding for its two newest programs: Renewable Energy to Fuels Through Utilization of Energy-Dense Liquids (REFUEL) and Rhizosphere Observations Optimizing Terrestrial Sequestration (ROOTS). REFUEL projects will use water, molecules from the air and electricity from renewable sources to produce high-energy liquid fuels for transportation and other uses. ROOTS projects will tackle the growing problem of soil “carbon debt” by developing sensing technologies to help farmers choose crop varieties that better capture carbon molecules from the atmosphere and store them in their root systems.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) today announced up to $30 million in funding for a new program for technologies that use renewable energy to convert air and water into cost-competitive liquid fuels. ARPA-E’s Renewable Energy to Fuels through Utilization of Energy-dense Liquids (REFUEL) program seeks to develop technologies that use renewable energy to convert air and water into Carbon Neutral Liquid Fuels (CNLF), which can be stored, transported, and later converted into hydrogen or electricity to provide power for transportation.

This workshop convened leading experts in electrochemistry, catalysis (hydrogenation and dehydrogenation), fuel cells and electrolyzers, organic synthesis and fuels to identify innovative research paths forward for the development of disruptive technologies that can bridge renewable energy production and transportation fuels and significantly reduce the cost of energy transportation from remote locations to consumers using energy dense liquid fuels.