Blog | Just Transition
September 12, 2024
March 9, 2023 | By Natalie Tham
CEBN is pleased to highlight Innovation at Scale: Supporting Pilot-Scale Demonstrations, a new report by Natalie Tham at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
The establishment of the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) at the Department of Energy represents an important step towards accelerating American innovation and achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This report identifies a gap in public funding for pilot-scale demonstration projects requiring less than $25 million and offers recommendations aimed at helping OCED support these projects by creating a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program through existing authority. The recommendations in this report were developed in consultation with clean energy startups, incubators and accelerators, investors, NGOs, think tanks, researchers, and BPC’s American Energy Innovators Network (AEIN). This report builds upon lessons learned from the longstanding DOE SBIR/STTR program and draws from the success of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA–E) SCALEUP program.
Eight key recommendations are discussed in this report:
OCED has a vital role to play in accelerating important decarbonization technologies, particularly at the pilot demonstration phase. The full report outlines each recommendation in greater detail.
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Guest blog post authored by Natalie Tham.
Content originally published here and has been edited slightly by CEBN with permission.