New Year, New ARPA-tunities

Kicking off the New Year, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) has issued an exciting new Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA): OPEN 2015!

At $125 million, this FOA is big news for innovative energy technologies being developed nationwide. The announcement marks the third open funding solicitation in ARPA-E’s history, and is designed to support the advancement of new, potentially disruptive, energy technologies in the U.S.

Late last year, ARPA-E and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center signed a partnership agreement to foster the success of Massachusetts-based applicants who are entering, working through and graduating from the ARPA-E program.  In support of this partnership and in order to increase the competiveness of these applications, MassCEC launched a new program, AmplifyMass, that provides up to 10 percent of the total project budget for company awardees (capped at $300,000), and up to 5 percent for university-based awardees (capped at $100,000).

Since 2010, MassCEC has provided over $2.3 million in matching funds to seven Massachusetts-based ARPA-E awardees, including 1366 Technologies, Ogin, FastCAP, MIT and INFINIUM. Awardees have gone on to raise more than $290 million in additional funding, and hire more than 280 employees.

The deadline to submit a Notice of Intent for OPEN 2015 is February 20^th, 5 p.m. EST. Applications for AmplifyMass will be accepted on a rolling basis, in conjunction with the ARPA-E application timeline for this and other FOAs.

Opportunities like these are advancing the Commonwealth as a leader in clean energy technology. For more information on AmplifyMass and other funding opportunities for Massachusetts-based clean energy start-ups, click here to sign up for our e-mail list!