Energy Department to fund initiatives focused on ‘barriers’ to clean energy tech

The Energy Department on Thursday is announcing that it will put money toward addressing challenges of the deployment of clean energy technologies. 

These projects, funded through a $18.4 million commercialization fund, aim to address “barriers, gaps, and root causes” of commercializing these technologies. 

While the department selects Technology Commercialization Fund projects each year, an energy official told The Hill that this year the department was taking a “new approach” that doesn’t target specific kinds of energy like wind or solar, but rather takes on issues that span different types of energy.

These include projects that target manufacturing, startups, the semiconductor sector and cultivating talent and connections, through the nation’s national laboratories. 

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement that bolstering these kinds of technologies will help the government combat climate change. 

“Accelerating how quickly we get novel technologies to the marketplace will allow us to deploy the clean energy sources needed to combat climate change, lower energy costs, and keep us on course to reaching President Biden’s decarbonization goals,” she said. 

This “new approach” was enabled by language in major energy legislation that became law in 2020, the official said.