DOE also finalized a $132.4 million loan guarantee for Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass of Kansas to support development of a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant. It will convert 300,000 tons of agricultural crop residues into 23 million gallons of ethanol a year using an innovative enzymatic hydrolysis process. See the DOE press release about the Abengoa Bioenergy project.
DOE's Loan Programs Office has issued loans, loan guarantees or offered conditional commitments for loan guarantees totaling nearly $40 billion to support more than 40 clean energy projects across the United States. See the Loan Programs Office website.
DOE Backs University Clean Energy Business Competitions
DOE awarded $2 million over three years for six regional awardees to create and administer a network of student-focused business creation competitions. The goal is to inspire young entrepreneurs to found innovative, clean energy companies.
The six regional competitions will encourage college students from across the country to develop successful clean energy business plans. This national initiative will provide students participants with the skills needed to create new businesses, and transform promising energy technologies from U.S. universities and national labs into innovative energy products.
The regional competitions build on DOE's history of supporting the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Clean Energy Prize to establish broader innovation and commercialization efforts, and to build a nationwide energy entrepreneurship "ecosystem."
Each region receives $360,000 over three years to host regional competitions. MIT is the awardee in the Northeast; University of Maryland in the Southeast; the Clean Energy Trust of Chicago in the Eastern Midwest; Rice University in the Western Southwest; University of Colorado/Boulder in the Western Midwest; and California Institute of Technology in the West.
The regional competitions will be completed by May 1, 2012. Panels of expert judges will select a winning team from each region to advance to the finals. The six regional winners will each receive $100,000 in DOE prize money and a chance to compete for the National Grand Prize at a competition held at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. in early summer 2012. See the DOE press release and the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Commercialization website.
$12 Million i6 Green Investment
On September 29, the Obama Administration announced the six winners of the i6 Green Challenge, an initiative to drive clean technology commercialization and entrepreneurship to further U.S. competitiveness and create jobs.
Projects in Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, New England, and Washington will each receive up to $1 million from the U.S. Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration to speed up commercialization based on new research. They will also get up to $6 million in additional funding and technical assistance from DOE, USDA, EPA, the National Science Foundation, and Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology and US Patent and Trademark Office.
The winning projects are: Iowa Innovation Network i6 Green Project in Ames, Iowa; Proof of Concept Center for Green Chemistry Scale-up, Holland, Michigan; iGreen New England Partnership; Igniting Innovation Cleantech Acceleration Network in Orlando, Florida; Louisiana Tech Proof of Concept Center, Ruston, Louisiana; and the Washington Clean Energy Partnership Project, Washington State.
Last year's challenge focused on accelerating high-growth entrepreneurship in the US. This year's concentrates on promoting Proof of Concept Center methodologies, which support all aspects of the entrepreneurship process, from assisting with technology feasibility and business plan development, to providing access to early-stage seed money, as well as making available a variety of mentors who can offer critical guidance to innovators. See the DOE press release and the i6 Challenge website.
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EERE Network News is a weekly publication of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
