SEEDING CRITICAL ADVANCES FOR LEADING ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES WITH UNTAPPED POTENTIAL 2019 | DE FOA 0002166

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0002166

The SEEDING CRITICAL ADVANCES FOR LEADING ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES WITH UNTAPPED POTENTIAL 2019 program, commonly called SCALEUP, is a funding opportunity run by the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). It is designed to push promising ARPA-E-supported technologies past the early proof-of-concept stage and into a more mature phase where they can realistically attract private investment and move toward commercialization. ARPA-E was created under the America COMPETES Act to strengthen US economic and energy security by supporting energy technologies that can cut reliance on foreign energy imports, reduce energy-related emissions (including greenhouse gases), and improve energy efficiency across the economy, while also helping the United States stay ahead in advanced energy technology development and deployment.

What makes SCALEUP distinct is its focus on the difficult middle ground between a successful lab or bench-scale result and a commercially credible technology. ARPA-E's traditional portfolio tends to emphasize high-risk, potentially transformational research that can create entirely new "learning curves" rather than just incremental improvements to existing technologies. In practice, that means ARPA-E often backs ideas that initially look more expensive or less proven than incumbent technologies but could become dramatically better if the technical hurdles are solved and the pathway to low-cost manufacturing is demonstrated. SCALEUP is meant to pick up the most promising of those ARPA-E-originated advances and fund the next step: scaling, integration, extended testing, manufacturability work, and other pre-pilot development activities that reduce the remaining technical and commercialization risks.

The program rationale is straightforward: many ARPA-E projects end after a relatively modest award (the description notes a typical ARPA-E project averaging about $2.5 million over three years), and even strong technical successes can still be too risky for industry or investors to take on immediately. SCALEUP aims to prevent these technologies from getting "stranded" after ARPA-E funding ends by supporting pre-commercial scale-up efforts that demonstrate performance in more realistic conditions, show how the technology integrates into larger systems, generate longer-duration performance and reliability data, and validate whether the technology can be manufactured at competitive cost and at meaningful scale. The underlying goal is to produce the kind of evidence that unlocks serious private-sector commitments such as follow-on capital, engineering resources, manufacturing partnerships, and pilot-scale facilities.

SCALEUP also highlights a national competitiveness concern: if US-funded innovations stall before reaching market readiness, the intellectual property and know-how created with taxpayer support can become vulnerable to being picked up and developed further overseas. ARPA-E frames SCALEUP as a way to keep US innovators and US industry positioned to lead not only in invention but also in scaling, manufacturing, and deployment in fast-moving global energy markets. In other words, it is not just about scientific progress; it is explicitly about bridging into the marketplace and protecting the United States' ability to capture the economic value of breakthrough energy technologies.

From an administrative standpoint, this opportunity was issued as Funding Opportunity Announcement DE-FOA-0002166 under ARPA-E's authorizing statute (42 U.S.C. 16538). Awards under the FOA are governed by the federal financial assistance rules in 2 C.F.R. Part 200 (as amended) and 2 C.F.R. Part 910. The funding instruments listed include cooperative agreements and grants, and the activity category is research and development in science and technology (CFDA 81.135). The anticipated scale of support is large relative to typical early-stage ARPA-E awards: the award ceiling is listed as $20,000,000, with an expectation of around 8 awards, reflecting the higher costs associated with scale-up, integration, and pre-pilot demonstrations.

The timeline included a two-step submission structure. A preliminary application (and an optional small business grant submission) was due February 14, 2020 at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time, and full applications were due July 20, 2020 at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time. ARPA-E required that submissions be made through its ARPA-E eXCHANGE system; applications sent through other channels were not to be reviewed. The FOA also positions SCALEUP within the broader DOE funding ecosystem by clarifying boundaries: basic research applicants are pointed toward the DOE Office of Science, while more incremental, roadmap-driven improvements to established technologies may be better suited for DOE applied energy offices such as EERE, Fossil Energy, Nuclear Energy, or Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. Overall, SCALEUP is best understood as ARPA-E's mechanism for taking the strongest ARPA-E-funded breakthroughs and funding the critical, expensive, and often underfunded work needed to prove they can scale and compete in real markets.

• The Department of Energy, Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "SEEDING CRITICAL ADVANCES FOR LEADING ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES WITH UNTAPPED POTENTIAL 2019" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.135.
• This funding opportunity was created on Dec 17, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jul 20, 2020 Submission deadline for Preliminary Application and optional small business grant February 14, 2020 at 930 a.m. Eastern Time. Submission deadline for Full Applications is July 20, 2020 at 930 a.m. Eastern Time.. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $20,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 8 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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