News Media Contact(s): 

(202) 586-4940

For Immediate Release

August 6, 2009

DOE Awards $377 Million in Funding for 46 Energy Frontier 

Research Centers

Washington, DC – In a major effort to accelerate the scientific breakthroughs needed to build a new 

21st-century energy economy, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the delivery of $377 

million in funding for 46 new multi-million-dollar Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) located at 

universities, national laboratories, nonprofit organizations, and private firms across the nation. 

“As global energy demand grows, there is an urgent need to reduce our dependence on imported oil and 

curtail greenhouse gas emissions,” said Secretary Chu. “Meeting the challenge to reduce our 

dependence on imported oil and curtail greenhouse gas emissions will require significant scientific 

advances. These centers will mobilize the enormous talents and skills of our nation’s scientific 

workforce in pursuit of the breakthroughs that are essential to expand the use of clean and renewable 

energy.” 

Of the $377 million awarded to the EFRCs, $277 million comes from funding made available through 

the Recovery Act with the remaining $100 million made from DOE’s FY2009 budget. The 46 EFRCs 

are being funded at $2-5 million per year each for a planned initial five-year period and were selected 

from a pool of applications received in response to a solicitation issued by the U.S. Department of 

Energy Office of Science in 2008 and announced on April 27, 2009. Selection of the EFRCs was based 

on a rigorous merit review process utilizing outside panels composed of scientific experts. In total, the 

EFRC initiative represents a planned DOE commitment of $777 million over five years. 

EFRC researchers will take advantage of new capabilities in nanotechnology, high-intensity light 

sources, neutron scattering sources, supercomputing, and other advanced instrumentation, much of it 

developed with DOE Office of Science support over the past decade, in an effort to lay the scientific 

groundwork for fundamental advances in solar energy, biofuels, transportation, energy efficiency, 

electricity storage and transmission, clean coal and carbon capture and sequestration, and nuclear 

energy. 

EFRCs funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act include: 

z Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ) – $14 million for five years to adapt the fundamental 

principles of natural photosynthesis to the man-made production of hydrogen or other fuels from 

sunlight. 

z University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ) – $15 million for five years to enhance the conversion of 

solar energy to electricity using hybrid inorganic-organic materials. 

z University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA) – $19 million for five years to 

discover and develop materials that control the interactions between light, electricity, and heat at 

the nanoscale for improved solar energy conversion, solid-state lighting, and conversion of heat 

U.S. Department of Energy Page 1 of 2

http://www.energy.gov/news2009/print2009/7768.htm 1/22/2010
into electricity. 

z Columbia University (New York, NY) – $16 million for five years to develop the enabling 

science needed to realize breakthroughs in the efficient conversion of sunlight into electricity in 

nanometer sized thin films. 

z Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) – $17.5 million for five years to understand and control the 

nature, structure, and dynamics of reactions at electrodes in fuel cells, batteries, solar 

photovolataics, and catalysts. 

z University of Delaware (Newark, DE) - $17.5 million for five years to design and characterize 

novel catalysts for the efficient conversion of the complex molecules comprising biomass into 

chemicals and fuels. 

z Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA) – $19 million for five years to 

understand the transport of charge carriers in synthetic disordered systems, which hold promise 

as new materials for conversion of solar energy to electricity and electrical energy storage. 

z University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA) – $16 million for five years to use novel, selfassembled polymer materials in systems for the conversion of sunlight into electricity. 

z University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI) – $19.5 million for five years to study complex 

material structures on the nanoscale to identify key features for their potential use as materials to 

convert solar energy and heat to electricity. 

z University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC) – $17.5 million for five years to synthesize new 

molecular catalysts and light absorbers and integrate them into nanoscale architectures for 

improved generation of fuels and electricity from sunlight. 

z Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) – $19 million for five years to synthesize, characterize, 

and understand new classes of materials under conditions far from equilibrium relevant to solar 

energy conversion, storage of electricity and hydrogen, and catalysis.University of Notre Dame 

(Notre Dame, IN) – $18.5 million for five years to understand and control, at the nanoscale, 

materials that contain actinides (radioactive heavy elements such as uranium and plutonium) to 

lay the scientific foundation for advanced nuclear energy systems. 

z Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA) – $21 million for five years to 

dramatically increase our fundamental knowledge of the physical structure of bio-polymers in 

plant cell walls to provide a basis for improved methods for converting biomass into fuels. 

z Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) – $20 million for five years to use fundamental 

knowledge about the interactions between catalysts and plant cell walls to design improved 

processes for the conversion of biomass to energy, fuels, or chemicals. 

z University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA) – $12.5 million for five years to 

simultaneously explore the light absorbing and emitting properties of hybrid inorganic-organic 

materials for solar energy conversion and solid state lighting. 

z University of Texas, Austin (Austin, TX) – $15 million for five years to pursue fundamental 

research on charge transfer processes that underpin the function of highly promising molecular 

materials for photovoltaic and electrical energy storage applications.

A complete list of the 46 EFRCs, their lead institutions, funding levels and objectives, is on the Basic 

Energy Sciences' Energy Frontier Research Centers page.

U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Public Affairs, Washington, D.C.

U.S. Department of Energy Page 2 of 2

http://www.energy.gov/news2009/print2009/7768.htm 1/22/2010