Are you an innovator? Do you have an emerging business or solution related to energy, climate, sustainability, or cleantech? Are you ready to take your innovation or business to the next level? The PowerNorth Virtual Incubator is a 10-week program tailored for early-stage energy and cleantech entrepreneurs in Minnesota.

Chain Reaction Innovations (CRI) is a two-year fellowship program at Argonne National Laboratory for innovators focused on clean energy and science technologies. Through an annual call, four to six individuals are selected to join CRI. It is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP), one of four ‘nodes’. The others are located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Sponsored by the Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the American-Made EnergyTech University Prize (EnergyTech UP) challenges student teams to compete for cash prizes for successfully identifying a promising energy technology, assessing its market potential, and creating a business plan for commercialization. Faculty are challenged to create innovative implementation plans that expand energy technology commercialization.

Students: Develop and present a business plan that leverages National Laboratory-developed or other emerging energy technologies developed by students, faculty, or industry. Throughout the competition, they receive mentorship and materials to help them succeed, all while competing for more than $400,000 in cash prizes.

Faculty: Develop and implement educational activities to engage more students in energy technology commercialization and entrepreneurship topics at their institution. While faculty have always been, and remain, welcome and encouraged to mentor a team competing in EnergyTech UP, this new track is designed to incentivize and support faculty directly, with more than $100,000 in cash prizes available.

The Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential (SCALEUP) Ready program provides a vital mechanism for the support of innovative energy R&D that complements ARPA-E’s primary focus on early-stage transformational energy technologies that require proof of concept. This program focuses only on scaling and pre-pilot projects of promising technologies that ARPA-E has previously funded. A SCALEUP Ready award would substantially build upon innovations achieved under the original ARPA-E award.

The Climate Change Investment Initiative (2c2i) is a 10-year, $20 million, joint commitment between Exelon Corporation and its philanthropic arm, Exelon Foundation, to invest in and cultivate innovative start-ups focused on advancing climate change mitigation, adaptation and resiliency efforts, while also promoting social equality and economic prosperity, in Exelon’s service territories. Through the combined resources of Exelon Foundation ($10 million equity investment commitment) and Exelon Corporation (up to $10 million in-kind service commitment), 2c2i supports innovative start-ups that catalyze solutions to climate change challenges within Exelon’s major market areas, while advancing social equality and economic prosperity. Specifically, we’re looking for startups focused on any aspect of sustainability (e.g. GHG mitigation, climate resiliency, etc.), that are currently doing work, or have the potential to do work, that impacts any of Exelon Corporation’s six major markets—Atlantic City, Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Wilmington, DE.

The Good Jobs in Clean Energy Prize is designed to encourage coalition-building in communities across the country that focus on creating quality jobs and fostering an equitable and inclusive workforce in clean energy sectors.  Each coalition is required to include, at a minimum, one coalition representative from each of the five key stakeholder groups below:

1. Labor organizations
2. Clean energy employers
3. Community-based organizations
4. Public agencies
5. Education and workforce providers

These competing coalitions will develop and implement Coalition Action Plans that improve the quality of and expand access to good jobs in clean energy.

The NSF Trailblazer Engineering Impact Award (TRAILBLAZER) program supports individual investigators who propose novel research projects with the potential to innovatively and creatively address national needs and/or grand challenges, advance US leadership, and catalyze the convergence of engineering and science domains. TRAILBLAZER will support engineers and scientists who leverage their distinctive track record of innovation and creativity to pursue new research directions that are distinct from their previous or current research areas.

NSF-supported science and engineering research increasingly relies on cutting-edge infrastructure. With its Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program and Major Multi-user Facilities (“Major Facilities”) projects, NSF supports infrastructure projects at the lower and higher range of infrastructure project costs, Foundation-wide, across science and engineering research disciplines. The Foundation-wide Mid-scale Research Infrastructure opportunity is intended to provide NSF with an agile, Foundation-wide process to fund experimental research capabilities in the mid-scale range between MRI and Major Multi-user Facilities.

The NYSERDA Clean Hydrogen Innovation program focuses on accelerating innovative solutions in clean hydrogen to decarbonize hard-to-electrify sectors and to support the transition to a resilient, zero-emission electric grid. Through this program, NYSERDA has up to $11.5 million in co-funding for clean hydrogen research, development, and demonstration projects. Funding in this solicitation focuses on Clean Hydrogen Innovation in the following technical challenge areas:

1. Challenge 1. Hydrogen applications to decarbonize industrial process heat
2. Challenge 2. Mitigation of nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from hydrogen combustion
3. Challenge 3. Hydrogen storage technologies for bulk storage and limited footprint areas
4. Challenge 4. Hydrogen-based generation systems for microgrids and grid support services
5. Challenge 5. Hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles.

The NSF SBIR/STTR and SBIR/STTR Fast-Track pilot programs support moving scientific excellence and technological innovation from the lab to the market. These NSF SBIR/STTR Fast-Track pilot programs provide fixed amount cooperative agreements for the development of a broad range of technologies based on discoveries in science and engineering with potential for societal and economic impacts. Under a traditional NSF SBIR/STTR Phase I award, a small business can receive non-dilutive funding for research and development (R&D) to demonstrate technical feasibility over 6 to 12 months and then, after completion of a Phase I project, companies may apply for Phase II funding to further develop the proposed technology.

The DOE Voucher Program builds bridges between U.S. entrepreneurs, businesses, technology developers or other relevant partners and third-party voucher providers to advance commercialization of innovative energy technologies. The first submission window solicits capability statements from potential voucher providers.  Voucher Opportunity (VO-10) addresses key adoption risk areas related to domestic supply chain availability and is meant to broaden the ecosystem of clean energy manufacturers through supporting activities including:

• Feasibility studies to convert existing production lines including, but not limited to, equipment and process reviews; staff qualifications and workforce needs assessments; and certification support.

The DOE Voucher Program builds bridges between U.S. entrepreneurs, businesses, technology developers or other relevant partners and third-party voucher providers to advance commercialization of innovative energy technologies. The first submission window solicits proposals from potential voucher providers. Voucher Opportunity (VO-4) includes support activities such as:

• Market analysis/research
• Marketing Materials development
• Go to Market strategy
• Product Scale up
• Patent landscape analysis
• Intellectual Property legal support
• and more.