Press and General Inquiries:
202-287-5440
ARPA-E-Comms@hq.doe.gov

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy today announced $9 million in funding for 18 projects to help shore up domestic energy production, improve energy efficiency and reliability, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The selected projects announced today cover a wide range of technical areas, underscoring the Biden-Harris Administration’s continued commitment to pursuing as many energy solutions as possible to achieve America’s net-zero goals while increasing our energy and national security.

“The projects announced today are outside-the-box ideas, and present a variety of exciting ways to identify solutions and reach President Biden’s ambitious decarbonization goals,” said ARPA-E Director Evelyn N. Wang. “These teams—representing American businesses, laboratories, and universities—understand that reaching our nation’s goals requires an all-hands-on-deck approach with all ideas on the table.”

The funding announced today is part of the Creating Revolutionary Energy and Technology Endeavors (CREATE) Exploratory Topic managed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). CREATE projects are intended to help establish potential new areas of technology development and provide ARPA-E with information that could lead to new focused funding programs.

The 18 projects announced today are working on technologies related to heat pumps, fusion, power electronics, semiconductors, and more. A few of the selected project teams include:

• Calion Technologies (Danville, CA) will develop a heat pump steam generator that could seamlessly replace natural gas boilers for industrial processes and introduce heat pumps to a new swath of customers. Calion Technologies’ approach is designed to generate steam at temperatures not possible with current heat pump technologies to accelerate the decarbonization of industrial heating, which accounts for 9% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions annually. (Award amount: $500,000)
• Marathon Fusion (San Francisco, CA) will develop technology to support the evaluation of metal foil pumps in nuclear fusion systems that could propel the novel technology into pilot plants within a decade. Metal foil pumps tested by the proposed device could significantly improve the fuel cycle cost for fusion power. (Award amount: $449,387)
• Perseus Materials (Knoxville, TN) will develop a new mode of composite manufacturing for wind turbine blades that could rapidly replace the dominant blade manufacturing process. Perseus’ additive manufacturing method could significantly reduce labor costs, cycle times, and factory footprints for blade manufacturers at the same output levels. (Award amount: $498,767)
• Texas Tech University (Lubbock, TX) will develop a method for producing a semiconductor material that would enable power devices that handle higher voltages and currents, furthering advancements in power distribution, electric transportation, nuclear energy, national security, health care, and material sciences. (Award amount: $500,000)
• University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN) will develop a low-cost power transistor design that could disrupt the market for devices in electric vehicles, renewable energy grid integration, industrial power control, and grid resilience. The proposed design could lead to potential energy savings of one quadrillion British Thermal Units (BTU) per year. (Award amount: $334,319)
• WH-Power (WHP) (College Park, MD) will develop a zinc battery that can operate at both high and low temperatures and be used for residential and grid-scale energy storage applications. WHP’s battery would be inherently safer and lower cost than existing batteries and could be produced from abundant, domestic materials. (Award amount: $500,000)

More information and complete project descriptions for all 18 teams announced today can be found on the ARPA-E website.

###