Clean Energy Trust recently attended the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Innovation Summit in Washington DC. The summit calls on academia, government and business to tackle advanced energy solutions through collaborative relationships. As active supporters of collaborative and innovative solutions for clean technology, we were excited to be a part of the action.
This year’s summit highlighted the need to pursue energy storage research and support Cleantech startups, two causes close to the heart of the Clean Energy Trust mission.
Energy Storage has become central theme in the discussion about our energy future. At this year’s summit, Bill Gates described energy storage as the “critical challenge of our time”. With variability in the availability of renewables like wind and solar, advanced battery technology offers solutions to stabilize energy distribution. The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) at Argonne National Lab, with whom Clean Energy Trust is a proud partner, was funded in 2012 by the DOE as a catalyst for innovation in battery technology research. The ARPA-E Summit calls on private and public partnerships to set advanced energy technology goals. JCESR is pushing ahead to meet those goals by harnessing the collaborative power of researchers and experimental scientists to develop groundbreaking energy storage solutions.
In addition to established national laboratory research, The ARPA-E Summit focused on the need to support new ventures in clean energy technology. Just as advanced research is crucial to improving existing technology, fostering innovation is crucial to catalyzing new technology. Clean Energy Trust facilitates the ARPA-E Summit mission to support startups through our annual Clean Energy Challenge, of which the DOE is a major sponsor. Former US Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, championed these goals in her remarks, “we are increasing our idea and business generation capacity at a faster pace than ever with the work that a lot of the people in the room, and ARPA-E funding, is enabling”.
As we look forward to the positive effects of the Department of Energy's continued dedication to clean technology, Clean Energy Trust is excited to continue our support of innovative solutions. This year’s Clean Energy Challenge features 14 new finalists with ideas that will impact our sustainable future.