The US Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a draft Renewable Energy and Efficient Energy Projects Solicitation which is expected to make as much as $4 billion in loan guarantees available for American renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.
The solicitation is designed to help commercialize technologies that may be unable to obtain full commercial financing, the DOE said. It aims to support technologies that reduce, avoid or sequester greenhouse gases.
The key technologies identified by the DOE as suitable for funding under the solicitation are advanced grid integration and storage, drop-in biofuels, waste-to-energy, enhancement of existing facilities and efficiency improvements.
Eligible projects in the advanced grid integration and storage category include: renewable energy generation, including distributed generation, incorporating storage; smart grid systems incorporating any combination of demand response, energy efficiency, sensing and storage to enable greater penetration of renewable generation; microgrid projects that reduce carbon emissions at a system level; and storage projects that clearly enable greater adoption of renewable generation.
The efficiency improvements category is open to projects which improve or reduce energy usage in residential, institutional, and commercial facilities, buildings and/or processes; recover, store or dispatch energy from curtailed or underutilized renewable energy sources; recover, store or dispatch waste energy from thermal, mechanical, electrical, chemical or hydro-processes; and dispatch, control or stabilize intermittent power to large transmission lines, smart grids, and microgrids.
The draft solicitation will be open for comment for 30 days.
