The Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential (SCALEUP) Ready program provides a vital mechanism for the support of innovative energy R&D that complements ARPA-E’s primary focus on early-stage transformational energy technologies that require proof of concept.
Technologies that achieve substantial technical advancement under ARPA-E support may still face significant technical and commercial challenges upon completion of an award's funding period, and thus are at risk of being stranded in their development path once ARPA-E funding ends. Experience across ARPA-E’s diverse energy portfolios, and input from a wide range of investors and industry stakeholders, indicate that pre-commercial scaling projects are critical to establish practical performance and cost parameters. These pre-commercial scaling projects aim to 1) translate the performance achieved at bench scale to commercially scalable versions of the technology, 2) integrate the technology with broader systems, 3) provide extended performance data, and 4) validate the manufacturability and reliability of new energy technologies. Successful scaling projects should enable industry stakeholders to justify the substantial commitments of financial resources, personnel, manufacturing facilities, and materials necessary to subsequently deploy the technologies at a commercial scale.
SCALEUP Ready seeks to scale the most promising technologies previously funded by ARPA-E. The possibility of ARPA-E-funded technologies becoming stranded along their development pathways leaves substantial intellectual property developed with American taxpayer dollars vulnerable to adoption by foreign competitors, who capture it for continued development and economic benefit overseas. This harms national competitiveness, as U.S. industries often fall behind on the development, scaling, and manufacturing of technologies necessary to compete in rapidly evolving global energy markets. Thus, projects selected for SCALEUP Ready will meet ARPA-E’s statutory goals by “accelerating transformational technological advances in areas that industry by itself is not likely to undertake because of technical and financial uncertainty.
The objective of SCALEUP Ready is to support the scaling of high-risk and potentially disruptive new technologies across the full spectrum of energy applications. This program focuses only on scaling and pre-pilot projects of promising technologies that ARPA-E has previously funded. A SCALEUP Ready award would substantially build upon innovations achieved under the original ARPA-E award.
Eligible projects will be based upon inventions:
1. That were conceived or first actually reduced to practice during the performance of work under the original ARPA-E award (“subject inventions”) with the intent to advance the innovative results to practical application, and
2. For which a patent has been obtained or a domestic patent application (which may be a provisional application) has been filed by the time the SCALEUP Ready Full Application is submitted.
SCALEUP Ready Applicants are not required to have participated within the original ARPA-E award. For example, an Applicant may hold an exclusive license or have purchased the relevant intellectual property rights to such subject invention(s), and thereby become eligible under SCALEUP Ready. Refer to Section II.A for additional information on eligibility for this funding opportunity.
Due to the breadth of technologies solicited under SCALEUP Ready, technical and project targets are not specified. Therefore, ARPA-E requires each Applicant to address how its proposed SCALEUP Ready project will sufficiently advance the technology to enable a viable path to market and ultimately lead to successful commercialization and anticipated impacts. The anticipated impacts must meet one or more of the agency’s statutory goals cited in Section I.A and include substantial U.S. manufacturing of resulting technologies. ARPA-E funding under SCALEUP Ready focuses on projects for which the proof-of-concept R&D challenges were largely addressed in a successful original ARPA-E award, and for which the logical next step is a path to real-world adoption.
For SCALEUP Ready, Applicants must show how the proposed technology will scale and ultimately thrive in the open market. This includes building a Project Team with the skillset and capabilities necessary for scaling high-risk energy technologies during and beyond the completion of the SCALEUP Ready project. Standalone Applicants are not eligible. Applicants should communicate the anticipated development path for bringing the technology to scale and achieving market adoption, emphasizing where the proposed SCALEUP Ready project fits in that path and how successful completion will unlock the additional resources necessary to take the next step.
SCALEUP Ready seeks Applicants with an existing early-stage developmental prototype that validates functionality in a controlled environment. Finalists selected for SCALEUP Ready funding will illustrate a path to market and be well positioned for investment from the private sector (e.g., financial or strategic venture capital, philanthropic awards, corporate development funding). To support this expectation, Awardees will not be required to provide a cost share payment for the initial portion of the award (approximately the first year of the award), as described in Section II.F.1 of the NOFO.
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