Vision OPEN 2024
Funding Agency:
- Department of Energy
The energy transition towards net-zero by 20503 demands an unprecedented level of innovation that must be completed in the span of a generation. Global primary energy usage has increased continuously for the past century. This increase is expected to continue with improved standards of living and the rapid expansion of new technologies with high levels of energy-intensive computation, such as artificial intelligence.4
Present grid capacity is constrained and cannot accommodate these increasing primary energy needs to reliably deliver power on demand.5 Meanwhile, all paths through the energy transition require concurrent efforts to decouple the production of essential carbon-based materials from harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Since the Agency’s inception, the ARPA-E OPEN program has served as an opportunity to advance transformative energy breakthroughs in critical areas that fall outside the scope of its technology-focused programs. Vision OPEN challenges the research community to develop groundbreaking technologies to enable a future energy landscape that is dramatically different.
The Vision includes three goals that are critical to achieve a sustainable energy and carbon transition with:
1) GHG-free6 abundant primary energy;
2) An intermodal energy superhighway that transports diversified forms of primary energy; and
3) A carbon transition that sustainably meets demand for polymers and other materials.
An illustration capturing this reimagined world is shown in Figure 1.
These goals will enable a novel and robust global energy system that responsibly meets the needs and aspirations of future generations. Achieving these three goals by 2050 will necessitate development and deployment of disruptive and ambitious technologies at an unparalleled speed and scale.
Individual awards may vary between $250,000 and $10 million in Federal share.
$150,000,000
Submission Deadline for Concept Papers: 9:30 AM ET, July 16, 2024
9:30 AM ET, TBD
During the “quiet period,” Applicants are required to submit all questions regarding this FOA to ARPA-E-CO@hq.doe.gov. Questions and Answers (Q&As) about ARPA-E and the FOA are available at http://arpa-e.energy.gov/faq. For questions that have not already been answered, please send an email with the FOA name and number in the subject line to ARPA-E-CO@hq.doe.gov. Due to the volume of questions received, ARPA-E will only answer pertinent questions that have not yet been answered and posted at the above link.