ARPA-E Requests Input on Future Funding Opportunities

The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) announced a formal Request for Information (RFI) for future funding opportunities. The RFI requests public input on potential ARPA-E programmatic areas and opportunities to overcome technological roadblocks to the development of transformational technologies relevant to the ARPA-E mission.

ARPA-E’s released its first Funding Opportunity Announcement on 27 April 2009, soliciting a broad range of ideas for transformational energy technology development.(Earlier post.) In July, ARPA-E said that it had received approximately 3,500 submissions for the $150 million available as part of its first Funding Opportunity Announcement. (Earlier post.)

With this RFI, ARPA-E is now reaching out to the public for input on specific programmatic energy technology areas that may be well-suited to provide transformational impacts on ARPA-E’s mission areas of reducing foreign energy imports; decreasing energy related emissions, including those of greenhouse gases; increasing energy efficiency across the US economy, and ensuring that the US maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies.

Examples of high-impact programs cited by ARPA-E in its RFI include:

• Electrification of Transport
• Advanced Renewable Transportation Fuels
• Advanced Vehicle Technologies
• Low Cost, Scalable, Dispatchable Centralized Renewable
• Future Grid
• Distributed Energy Technologies
• Efficient End Use of Energy
• Low Carbon Fossil Energy Technologies
• Energy Materials of the Future
• Industrial Efficiency

Responses to the RFI are due to ARPA-E by 25 September 2009.