The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is launching the HBCU Clean Energy Education Prize to help develop advanced clean energy programming opportunities and connections for HBCUs across the United States. The prize focuses on three primary goals:

1. Inspire K-12 and community college students to engage with and learn about clean energy subjects through HBCU-hosted educational programs.
2. Initiate partnerships between HBCUs and other universities with proven clean energy focused programs to build new cross-university degree and certificate programs.
3. Integrate and build programming between university and industry partners to advance career opportunities for HBCU students in the clean energy space.

The J.M.K. Innovation Prize seeks to identify, support, and elevate innovators who are spearheading transformative early-stage projects in the fields of the environment, heritage conservation, and social justice. In 2023, we will award up to ten Prizes, each including a cash award of $150,000 over three years, plus $25,000 in technical assistance funds, for a total award of $175,000. Awardees also receive guidance through the Fund and its resource network, providing tools and training to support them through the challenges of a startup organization.

The American-Made Sunny Awards for Equitable Community Solar (The Sunny Awards) is a $200,000 prize competition that will recognize community solar portfolios and programs that employ or develop best practices to increase equitable access to the meaningful benefits of community solar for subscribers and their communities. Community solar is any solar project or purchasing program in which the benefits of a solar project flow to multiple customers such as individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and other groups, within a certain geographic area.

The Urban Future Lab is pleased to announce the Urban Future Prize Competition, which seeks to find the brightest climatetech startups and, through the generous support of The New York Community Trust, MUFG Union Bank, and NYSERDA, award two winners with $50,000 cash prizes. These awardees will also receive admission into the ACRE Incubator, New York’s longest-running and most successful climatetech program.

The Fermi Award is bestowed by the President of the United States to an individual or individuals of international stature in recognition of exceptional scientific, technical, policy, and/or management achievements related to the broad missions of the U.S. Department of Energy and its programs. Established in 1956 by President Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission, the Fermi Award is given to inspire people of all ages, through the examples of Enrico Fermi, the 1938 Nobel Laureate in physics, and the Fermi Award laureates who followed in his footsteps, to explore and open new scientific and technological realms. The Fermi Award is administered on behalf of the White House by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. A Fermi Award laureate receives:

A citation signed by the President of the United States and the Secretary of Energy;
A gold-plated medal bearing the likeness of Enrico Fermi; and
A $100,000 honorarium (if there is more than one laureate named, the honorarium is shared equally).

The MECC invites selected teams to identify a promising market within the blue economy and to determine the best marine energy application within that market to address. Over the course of school year, teams develop materials for two required contests and one optional challenge, outlined below. Teams present their work at the MECC final event, typically held in conjunction with a Spring industry event. MECC teams compete in four required contests:

• Business Plan Challenge: Teams will identify a promising market within the blue economy (either a market identified in the WPTO Powering the Blue Economy report or another potential market within the blue economy) and determine, within that market, the best marine energy application to address. Submissions in this challenge will count for approximately 28% of the total final score.
• Technical Design Challenge: Teams will evaluate the performance requirements in their chosen blue economy market by identifying and interviewing at least three potential end users. Teams will complete a detailed design of a marine-energy-powered device to serve those end users. Submissions in this challenge will count for approximately 30% of the total final score.
• In the Build and Test Challenge: Competitors will build a scaled prototype of their concept and perform a series of lab tests. The submissions in this challenge will count for approximately 16% of the total final score.
• Community Connections Challenge: Competitors will foster connections with the broader marine energy industry and with their local community. The submissions in this challenge will count for approximately 26% of the total final score.

This competition invites interdisciplinary teams of undergraduate and graduate students to:

• Develop a case study on hydropower’s role in a future power grid supported by 100% renewable energy and the associated opportunities and challenges of incorporating the hydropower fleet into this future power grid.
• Partner with hydropower industry professionals to learn about career opportunities in the hydropower industry
• Conduct educational events to raise awareness of hydropower in their communities.

The DPE Water Power Technologies Office is launching the Innovating Distributed Embedded Energy Prize (InDEEP) to encourage innovation in distributed embedded energy converter technology  to generate new, precommercial materials for wave energy conversion. This prize will challenge innovators from within and beyond wave energy to design and develop novel materials for marine energy applications that will lay the foundation for generating electricity at the grid scale.

This three-phase, two-year competition is offering a combined cash prize pool up to $2.3 million. Teams will also receive technical support, teaming support, and other forms of mentorship throughout the prize to enable their success.

Apply to Phase I by August 23.

Do you want your company featured during the annual WCS  Pitch Competition? Competition is tight as there are ten pitching slots for female-led startups. Apply now and show us what you’ve got! The 4th WCS pitch competition will feature 10 female-led startups. The competition is centered around the WCS mission statement: furthering the roles of women in growing the green economy and making a positive impact on the environment. The event is to take place on virtually on Friday, June 9th 2023.

Start-up eligibility:
– Current funding stage from seeking Seed funding to recently closed Series A
– Company is led by women, either as Founders, CEOs or in the C-Suite
– Solving a cleantech or sustainability challenge, either hardware or software

SPE Data Science and Engineering Analytics Technical Section (DSEATS) is organizing a datathon focused on geothermal energy, in collaboration with SPE Gulf Coast Section, US Department of Energy, Utah Forge, and Project InnerSpace. The SPE Geothermal Datathon 2023 is going to challenge participants to solve a geothermal engineering problem using real field data from the Utah FORGE Project. Participants are going to use modern machine learning methods to create predictive models to aid future geothermal energy production. The competition will kick-off on April 3rd, 2023.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Electricity launched the High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) Prize to incentivize new technology solutions to improve the performance and resilience of the U.S. energy grid.

The HVDC Prize invites electrical and industrial engineers, computer scientists, and power electronics researchers to develop new power and energy system solutions to improve renewable distributed generation, transmission to population centers, and integration with the U.S. energy grid.

Up to four winning teams will receive $50,000 each for proposing new HVDC technology solutions to strengthen the U.S. energy grid. An informational webinar will be held April 6. Apply by June 7.