Storage, Biofuel Lead $156 Million in Energy Research Grants
Seeking to push high-risk energy research, the U.S. government gives a boost to heat storage, rare earth metal, and biofuel technology projects.
Can the energy of the sun be stored in molten glass, supercritical fluids, or metal? Can genetic engineering squeeze more biofuel from pine trees or tobacco? Can new alloys be created to replace the rare earth minerals so important to alternative energy?
These are among 60 research projects named Thursday to share in $156 million in U.S. government grants to push the cutting edge of energy technology. It is the fourth round of funding in the U.S. Department of Energy’s two-year-old ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy) program, an effort to inject support into “high-risk, high-payoff” research on energy.
ARPA-E is modeled after DARPA, the Pentagon’s long-running program to support innovative military systems research, which is credited with the advances in
