U.S. launches US$40 mn effort for clean energy materials

The U.S. Department of Energy launched Energy Materials Network (EMN), a US$40 million initiative that will focus on the design, testing, and production of advanced materials.

“Manufacturing better materials for clean energy products has the potential to revolutionize whole industries, but only a small fraction of the materials investigated in the laboratory currently make it to widespread market deployment,” said DOE Under Secretary Franklin (Lynn) Orr. “By bringing together American manufacturing expertise, academic leadership in discovering new materials, and the exceptional capabilities of DOE’s National Labs, the Energy Materials Network can spark a revolution in commercializing clean energy materials.”

“Through the Energy Materials Network, the National Labs and their partners will develop and apply cutting-edge new materials research tools that will allow us to dramatically accelerate clean energy materials discovery by doing things like using computers to search completely new parts of the periodic table at record speed and performing high-throughput experiments that synthesize and test thousands of materials at a time instead of just one or two,” said DOE Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy David Danielson. “This could be a true game-changer for accelerating cost reduction through innovation for a wide array of clean energy technologies all across the board.”