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Energy Technologies Area (ETA) researchers are continually building on the strong scientific foundation we have developed over the past 50 years. We address the world’s most pressing climate challenges by bringing to market energy-efficient innovations across the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors. ETA is at the forefront of developing better batteries for electric vehicles; improving the country's aging electrical grid and innovating distributed energy and storage solutions; developing grid-interactive, efficient buildings; and providing the most comprehensive market and data analysis worldwide for renewable technologies like wind and solar.
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The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) Strategic Plan is the guiding force for our research and development for the next ten years. It clearly charts a path toward clean-energy solutions and focuses on five detailed Strategic Initiatives. The Plan provides an in-depth look at how ETA is accelerating research to provide affordable, clean energy to all while accomplishing deep, economy-wide decarbonization, looking to avoid a rise in global average temperature while simultaneously developing solutions to increase humanity's resilience to extreme weather volatility.
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The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) is unique in translating fundamental scientific discoveries into scalable technology adoption. Our approach combines an understanding of the marketplace and the role of state and federal regulation and policies. ETA's research drives real-world, practical results that affect and improve the everyday lives of Americans and those across the globe. Saving energy and battling the Climate Crisis are key to the foundation of our research, which is driven by technoeconomic analysis and in-lab experimentation and discovery.

A Survey of State Clean Energy Fund Support for Research and Development Projects

Publication Type

Case Study

Date Published

10/2004

Authors

Fitzgerald, Garrett, Ryan H. Wiser, Mark Bolinger

Abstract

State clean energy funds have typically focused their financial support on renewable energy deployment and commercialization efforts. A number of funds, however, have also supported earlier stage technology research and development (R&D) activities. This survey reviews efforts by CESA-member clean energy funds to support research and development of new clean energy technologies (principally renewable energy sources, but also fuel cells), including related energy storage mechanisms. Programs offered by non-CESA member funds fall outside the scope of this survey. We note in advance that the demarcation between R&D and deployment/commercialization is not always clear. For the purposes of this summary, however, we place the greatest emphasis on those activities clearly falling within the R&D category, and we do not exhaustively review support for demonstration projects or paper research studies, though we acknowledge that such efforts often do include an R&D component. To date, ten funds – the California Energy Commission, the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation, the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust, the Xcel Energy Renewable Development Fund, the New Jersey Clean Energy Program, the Long Island Power Authority, the Rhode Island Renewable Energy Fund, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and the Wisconsin Focus on Energy program – have offered support to research and development of new clean energy technologies. Below we review the efforts of these funds, starting with the three funds that have arguably been the most aggressive in pursuing R&D activities so far: the California Energy Commission, the Xcel Energy Renewable Development Fund, and Development Authority.

Journal

Case Studies of State Support for Renewable Energy

Year of Publication

2004