Department of Energy Selects Industry Partners To Validate Innovative Manufacturing Technologies

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) selected five private-sector partners to conduct field validation of clean, efficient technologies in real-world industrial environments. These Industrial Technology Validation (ITV) projects will accelerate the adoption of cost-effective, emerging technologies that can help decarbonize the industrial sector.

“To achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, we must rapidly scale-up the development and deployment of clean-energy technologies by American manufacturers,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Kelly Speakes-Backman. “By bringing these emerging technologies out of the laboratory and onto the factory floor, DOE’s Industrial Technology Validation program moves us one step closer to commercializing the innovations that will make our clean energy future possible.”

The selected testbeds will evaluate innovative energy and water-treatment technologies in facilities operated by the following DOE Better Plants partners:

• Nissan North America (Canton, MS)
• Toyota North America (Blue Spring, MS)
• Schneider Electric (Seneca, SC)
• Ahlstrom-Munksjo (Mosinee, WI)
• Cleveland Cliffs (Cleveland, OH)

For each selected technology, a team of experts led by DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory will develop a measurement and verification plan, conduct on-site data collection and testing, analyze performance, and draft a field-validation report. These reports will be made publicly available to help inform future initiatives in industrial energy and water conservation.

DOE administers the ITV Pilot in collaboration with its Better Plants partners, a group of more than 240 leading manufacturers with ambitious energy productivity and sustainability goals. As part of this voluntary leadership program, these partners share tools and resources, technical assistance, peer-to-peer networking, and technology solutions.

As part of today’s announcement, the ITV Pilot has officially issued a new Request for Proposals (RFP). The new RFP seeks additional technologies that can cost-effectively transform the operational efficiency of American industry and meet the following criteria:

• Improves industrial decarbonization, energy efficiency, and/or performance efforts
• Reduces water use, wastewater effluent, or waste creation
• Qualifies as “emerging/innovative” as defined in the RFP
• Potential to lead to demonstrable performance improvement due to wide-scale replicability.

This RFP is open to both vendors already teamed with a host site and individual technology vendors who have not yet identified a host site.

Learn more about how DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office invests in manufacturers, not-for-profit entities, research organizations, and institutions of higher education to identify challenges, catalyze innovations, and develop the cutting-edge material, process, and information technologies needed for an efficient and competitive domestic manufacturing sector.

EERE’s mission is to accelerate the research, development, demonstration, and deployment of technologies and solutions to equitably transition America to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050, and ensure the clean energy economy benefits all Americans, creating good paying jobs for the American people—especially workers and communities impacted by the energy transition and those historically underserved by the energy system and overburdened by pollution.