Opportunity Title:
Technology Commercialization Fund Voucher Program
Description:
In November 2021, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), more commonly known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL),1 which provided $62 billion in new funding to support a broad array of clean energy activities and programs. As with the Base Annual Appropriated TCF, 0.9% of the research, development, demonstration (RD&D) and commercialization application2 funding provided by BIL is allocated to the TCF.
Under BIL TCF, OTT pursues activities that broadly support the commercialization of promising energy technologies while simultaneously enhancing and improving American infrastructure, competitiveness, opportunity, and equity and addressing the climate crisis. OTT will achieve this by working collaboratively across relevant DOE program offices, including:
Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED)
Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM)
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC)
Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER)
OTT seeks to cultivate a broader innovation network around the BIL provision activities to enable faster replication and scaling of demonstration projects for broader private sector uptake.
The Voucher Program leverages DOE’s recent partnership intermediary agreement with ENERGYWERX. ENERGYWERX will work directly with program participants and facilitate the third-party support needed to accelerate commercialization of their clean energy technology.
This program will lower barriers for small businesses, non-traditional partners, and other organizations from underrepresented communities that may face difficulties accessing testing facilities or obtaining expensive third-party subject matter expertise needed to advance their technologies, business, or energy projects to the next level. The Voucher Program currently offers four categories of in-kind support, with the potential for more to be added in the future:
Pre-Demonstration Commercialization Support: addresses key adoption risk areas faced by companies already funded by DOE that are moving on from the research and development stage. This support includes bankability studies, manufacturing or supply chain assessments, and other technoeconomic analyses.
Performance Validation, Modeling, and Certification Support: enables third-party evaluation of technology performance under certification-relevant operating conditions, accelerated lifetime testing to test for potential failure types, and access to advanced modeling and digitization resources. This support is invited for companies that have a product prototype for a technology that is in alignment with the interest of DOE OCED or EERE.
Clean Energy Demonstration Project Siting/Permitting Support: helps authorities having jurisdiction like city or tribal governments understand new clean energy technology benefits and challenges, evaluate siting and permitting best practices developed by similar jurisdictions, develop streamlined permitting processes, and support community engagement on related issues.
EERE Commercialization Support: provides market research, business plan, fundraising road-mapping (from both public and private sources), and other commercialization strategy assistance for companies who have received funding from DOE EERE research and development programs and have a functional technology prototype.
Total Amount Available:
$27,500,000
Application Deadline:
DOE intends to open the program for submissions later in summer 2023.
Grant Management Associates has years of experience with opportunities like this one. Contact us today for a consultation.
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