This lab call represents the combined effort of nine distinct U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Technology Offices. The Department of Energy Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) was established by Congress through the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct05) and reauthorized by the Energy Act of 2020 (EA 2020) to “promote promising energy technologies for commercial purposes.” Within DOE, the Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) is charged with leading policy and programs related to technology commercialization. The goal of TCF is to improve America’s energy competitiveness and security by accelerating commercialization and the shepherding of critical energy technologies from the lab to the market, where the private sector will continue to innovate.
For Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23), DOE continues to implement the revised approach with TCF for Base Annual Appropriations. Persistent barriers and known gaps that deter the commercialization of laboratory technologies continue to exist and improvements are still needed. The intent of the Core Laboratory Infrastructure for Commercialization topics (Topics 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6) are to fill in missing infrastructure pieces and strengthen those already there by addressing core commercialization challenges, barriers, and gaps, as well as their root causes (inside and outside of the labs). Additionally, for FY23, the lab call will also seek proposals from Labs to advance the commercialization of individual energy-related technologies (Topic 4).