Application of satellite-based sulfur dioxide observations to support the cleantech sector: Detecting emission reduction from copper smelters
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First Look West (FLoW 2.0) (Final Technical Report for Closeout)
DOE’s Cleantech UP was an annual business plan competition, operating nationally between 2015 and 2018 through eight regional nodes that included Caltech’s FLOW. Cleantech UP focused on supporting university students at all levels creating cleantech startups. FLOW operated nationally with a focus on California. In support of the DOE’s objectives FLOW developed an immersive five point program that targeted major gaps in the educational support and practical resources available to scientists and engineers starting their first cleantech companies that prevented such young innovators from becoming entrepreneurs. Specifically, the FLOW program augmented the number of participants entering the energy entrepreneurship pipeline via the Cleantech UP competition; helped the US remain competitive by increasing the viability and financing potential of these cleantech companies started by young academics; and helped build the regional, state and national infrastructure that spurs and supports entrepreneurship. Each year the FLOW featured two major judging rounds for candidates drawn from as many as 80 applicants annually, providing essential experience and feedback that helped define the direction of these young entrepreneurs. The FLOW winners competed at the DOE’s national event, and FLOW companies took the top prize twice in the total history of the DOE program which was started in 2011.
96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗
Clean Energy Trust Challenge
Over the past three years, Clean Energy Trust (CET) supported student education and early-stage entrepreneurship in the clean energy sector by managing and effectively executing the Cleantech University Prize (Cleantech UP) initiative. CET has a long track record running these competition-style events; CET built on its past successes with the National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition (NCEBPC) and the Clean Energy Trust Challenge (the Challenge) - CET's annual business plan competition and summit event - to excel during this initiative. CET's goals with this Cleantech UP program were to enhance student engagement and participation across colleges and universities in the Midwest region. This broad objective was outlined by increasing the number of applicants, the number and geographic footprint of universities and colleges actively engaged and, most importantly, the trajectory for the student businesses that participate in our programs.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
The material challenges of the next generation of concentrated solar power
This is an introductory seminar about the cleantech-to-market pathway with a focus on material innovation in Concentrated Solar Power. This seminar will first lay out the business model of cleantech companies to identify the players in technical innovation. With a summary of the desires of the major player, this seminar will dive into the possibility, potential, and challenges of next-generation Concentrated Solar Power to answer these desires, followed by a detailed discussion on the material challenges. The scope of our project “Scalable, Infiltration-Free Ceramic Matrix Composite for the molten salt receiver” will be presented as one potential way to solve these challenges. In the end, this seminar will present some job opportunities to inspire the audience to participate in cleantech innovation.
42 ENGINEERING↗
Development of a Western U.S. Fusion Energy Commercialization Hub
Fusion energy, if successfully commercialized and globally adopted, could substantially increase U.S. energy dominance and provide essentially unlimited baseload power for the national grid. It also stands to provide the U.S. with a strong source of economic growth through the 2030s and 2040s, giving the U.S. a new and highly internationally competitive industry for export. Fusion can also provide the increased electrical power generation capacity required to power current and future artificial intelligence (AI) activities. In October 2024, the CleanTech Alliance held a fusion energy commercialization regional hub workshop alongside its annual Seattle Fusion Week conference. The event brought together fusion companies, researchers, economic development experts, federal and state government representatives, and power utilities from the western states of Washington, California, Colorado and Nevada. Attendees discussed the potential of regionally focused commercialization of fusion energy in three pillars: technology, workforce, and economic development. Mel Clark, President & CEO, CleanTech Alliance, and Dr. Javier Garay, Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and Founding Director of the UCSD Fusion Engineering institute, are co-PIs for this project. The project is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) through a Field Work Proposal to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) with Karl Mueller as point-of-contact. Chris Ajemian (Principal, Ajemian Consulting, LLC) and Dr. Christopher Keane (Professor of Physics and former Vice-President for Research, Washington State University) co-organized the workshop and were the editors for this report. This report details the current state of the work of the four western states to develop industry-led collaboration with national laboratories, universities, and government at all levels to hasten the commercialization of fusion energy. It provides a summary of fusion energy R&D needs, presents the ideas the attendees at the workshop identified for deepening regional collaboration, and makes findings and recommendations for next steps.
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
Final Technical Report - Clean Technology Accelerator Program (CLEANTAP)
Formerly known as the Clean Technology Accelerator Program (CleanTAP), the Incubatenergy Network was proposed via the National Incubator Initiative for Clean Energy (NIICE) to improve coordination and collaboration amongst incubators and accelerators from across the country, and to assist in developing a set of best practices to help improve incubator performance standards. Support networks are in place in many areas around the United States to help guide entrepreneurs along their paths to success. Through knowledge sharing and access to best practices, the clean energy developer community, and thus the public at large, will benefit from improvements in incubators and accelerators to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem and facilitate the commercialization of clean energy technologies. The Incubatenergy Network’s objective was three-fold: It was to serve as a comprehensive source of information about US clean energy incubators, to foster engagement and communication between clean energy incubators, and to provide a rich resource of experts and mentors. Launched in 2014 through a partnership among the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Incubatenergy Network is a network of approximately 25 technology incubators and accelerators located across the U.S., and expanding internationally, that supports more than 500 startup companies focused on a wide variety of cleantech solutions.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Leveraging a Southern California Energy Innovation Cluster to Pilot and Validate Emerging Energy Technologies
The EPIC Pilot Program, led by the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), was designed to help early-stage clean technology startups accelerate technical validation, investment readiness, and market entry. The project focused on supporting startups in designing and deploying small-scale pilots with the guidance of EPIC Partners, a network of regional stakeholders in the Southern California energy ecosystem, including but not limited to: the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the California Energy Commission (CEC), Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro), and Edison International, among others. Through mentorship, funding, and site access for technology deployments, the program provided a structured pathway for startups to test and refine their technologies in real-world settings.
14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
Spark Clean Energy Cleantch University Prize Final Technical Report
Final Technical Report for Cleantech University Prize
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
Program Incubation and Commercialization Best Practices Report
As a reminder, the primary task of the 4C Program is to increase the commercialization rate of cleantech companies in California. Commercialization, broadly defined, is the innovation continuum of developing and introducing a new product or service into the market. For measurability, the 4C Program defines commercialization as encompassing a startup’s: (a) preparation, (b) incubation, (c) commercial-scale pilot / demonstration, and (d) first customer.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Transforming LA’s Urban Landscape - SoCal Edge Final Report
Existing commercial and retail buildings represent roughly 40% of the total electricity sales by utilities across the United States. Current programmatic efforts focus on individual technologies and struggle with comprehensive impactful energy retrofits due to cost-effectiveness concerns, customization requiring specialized contractors, and disruption of building operation. The SoCal Edge program, operated by the Los Angeles Cleantech (LACI) Incubator and the LA Better Buildings Challenge (LABBC), promoted an innovative and integrated approach to achieving deep energy savings by leveraging portfolio properties and developing packages of technologies that can be specified into building retrofits and integrated into combined solutions that can transform the retrofit market in a truly meaningful way.
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
New Approaches to Energy Hardware Innovation and Incubation
Leadership in energy innovation depends on the ability of entrepreneurs to develop and successfully bring innovative technology solutions to market. In the past five years, novel approaches have emerged to support the early-stage cleantech development of physical systems, improving the path from invention to scale-up in the marketplace. Building on a Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis (JISEA) white paper from 2016, we provide additional details, updates on progress, and analyses of these maturing programs and organizations, as well as discuss several new initiatives that have been created since 2016. These enterprises differ from traditional business incubators both in their commercialization methodologies and in the combined resources leveraged from founding organizations and partners. This paper provides a general landscape of these innovative programs and begins to identify metrics of success to help quantify the impact of these various approaches.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
The 501vc®Fund - A New Model for Investing in Energy Innovation. Final report
Clean Energy Trust (CET) set out to identify approaches to attract new investors to early-stage cleantech businesses. Over the course of the project, significant research and validation was conducted on the feasibility of different pathways by which to secure additional financial support for early-stage clean energy startups. CET explored both a hybrid fund approach and a stand-alone, affiliated fund approach. Over the course of this work, CET developed quantitative models for optimum fund size and specifications, conducted extensive market research, evaluated fund implementation best practices, developed a strong understanding of the legal requirements for fund design, and identified likely candidates who could replicate this approach.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
Ibis Networks/WattIQ (IN2 Final Report)
Ibis Networks is a full-stack cleantech company that provides plug-level energy monitoring and control to solve energy and asset management problems for the enterprise. During DATES – DATES, an NREL research team worked with the Ibis team to validate their product, the InteliSocket. The Ibis InteliSocket is a pass-through plug-load energy monitor and controller that is designed to reduce energy wasted by common 120 V plug-in devices in commercial office buildings, such as computer peripherals, conference room AV equipment, and break-room appliances. The system can shut off supply power to these end uses via remote control, manual switches, pre-set schedules, or automated control algorithms. The scope of this IN2 project was the development and refinement of “smart” learning behavior algorithms (LBAs), which could help installation processes and dramatically expand the sockets’ capabilities and energy-saving potential by suggesting suitable control schedules that are based on monitored use patterns. While Ibis has the analytical and software expertise for algorithm development, the lack of test data, both in a controlled laboratory setting and in real-life deployment scenarios, represented a key barrier toward commercialization of the product. Assistance through the IN2 program provided an opportunity to conduct the needed “trial and error” algorithm development. The project included baseline field-data collection, laboratory testing, and field validation components, all of which were conducted at the NREL campus between April 2017 and July 2019.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
SiPA | Simple Partnership Agreement for accelerating early-stage collaborations between startups and large corporations
The technologies required to advance society will come from research from a broad range of scientific disciplines including materials science, chemistry, physics, and biology where the innovation relies on a scientific breakthrough rather than a software or business model innovation. This science-based technology focus can be referred to as “hardtech,” although there is much crossover with the concept of “cleantech.” These new technology developments will have vast reach across most industrial sectors - energy, materials, manufacturing, electronics, life sciences, etc. - with great economic consequences. The majority of these scientific breakthroughs will be produced and developed by those companies best suited for high-risk, early-stage development work: startups.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
A Transformational Graduate Program: Mines and NREL Join Forces To Shape the Future of Energy
Developing secure, resilient, and adaptive energy infrastructure that fosters economic growth while reducing environmental impact is among the most pressing challenges—and greatest opportunities—of our time. It will require the next generation of thought leaders to capably and creatively guide this vital energy sector transition. Through a new interdisciplinary graduate program, Colorado School of Mines (Mines) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are cultivating the rich opportunity landscape needed to develop these future innovators. The Mines/NREL Advanced Energy Systems (AES) degree program prepares researchers at the doctoral level and energy professionals at the master’s level to address the full complexity of tomorrow's infrastructure, economic, and environmental challenges. The combination of a thriving cleantech market in Colorado, world-class resources and researchers at NREL, and rigorous educational and technical programs at Mines create a truly one-of-a-kind opportunity for advancing fields related to energy systems. These links can uniquely equip top-caliber students to become the scientists and engineers at the forefront of our global energy economy transformation.
Advanced Energy Systems↗
EV Charging and the Impacts of Electricity Demand Charges
These slides were presented at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator's (LACI's) April 2022 combined Light-Duty and Goods Movement Working Group meetings. The talk summarized recent and ongoing research at NREL to model EV charging demands for passenger and commercial M/HD vehicles and estimate the impacts of utility demand charges on charging costs.
ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,POWER TRANSMISSION AND↗
West Gate
West Gate is the fourth U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP), which launched with its first cohort in September 2022. Selected innovators are embedded at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for two years to access its world-class expertise and facilities. West Gate aligns with the LEEP mission to enable the most promising cleantech entrepreneurs to develop game-changing technologies for a clean energy future. With this in mind, West Gate welcomed Cohort 1 innovators working in materials circularity, building electrification, energy storage, and energy generation. Leveraging the power of the LEEP brand and the NREL network, West Gate is a hub for innovations vital to building a clean energy economy. Working with partners at the Colorado School of Mines, LabStart, Rockies Venture Club, and countless leaders in Colorado's energy ecosystem, West Gate provides innovators with support and training as they build their businesses and make an impact in the energy community.
clean energy↗
All Systems Go: Regional Collaborations for Scaling AEC Innovation: Preprint
The high and rising cost of preserving and delivering housing in the U.S. requires changes to existing practices of finance, design, and construction. Innovative methods such as industrialized construction could offer the means to address housing undersupply while reducing delivery costs, operational costs and material waste in the building industry, but they face challenges to success and to scale. Simultaneously, construction and cleantech innovators themselves face skepticism from the traditional entrepreneurial ecosystem such as incubators and accelerators while attempting to navigate systems level challenges. To respond to this need, various public and private sector stakeholders have launched initiatives to support innovative companies. These include nonprofits such as Terner Labs and Ivory Innovations offering curated programming to architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) startups; housing developers in Minnesota and California "bundling" multiple projects together to reach economies of scale with a consistent project team; public and private sector entities developing "catalogues" of pre-approved home designs in the U.S. and Canada. This exploratory paper documents several of these emerging ecosystem-development efforts to support innovative housing approaches, characterizing them by leading stakeholder and intervention strategy based on publicly available information. The paper finds that these initiatives share similar high level goals but vary in implementation, reflecting different stakeholder priorities, regional market and policy dynamics, and housing typologies. The early stage of these efforts offer limited data for comparing actual outcomes, but the paper highlights common qualitative themes and identifies opportunities for further research and potential coordination among these efforts.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗