Recent federal policy has led to the establishment and reinvigoration of many agencies and programs devoted to spurring the development and commercialization of clean energy technologies. Examples include the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, tax credits provided through the U.S. Treasury, the Loan Programs Office, and the Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy. This grant funds a project led by Jonas Meckling at the University of California, Berkeley and Laura Diaz Anadon at the University of Cambridge to comprehensively identify these programs, document the strategies they employ, and study their impact on energy technology commercialization outcomes. Various methodological approaches will be brought to bear on these questions. First, the research team, will collect qualitative data about the institutional characteristics and functions of these programs, drawing on document reviews, interviews with key stakeholders, and other sources of information. They will then use this initial analysis to identify different institutional design features that warrant further quantitative study. In the second phase, the team will analyze energy technology commercialization by examining two databases that track patenting, investments, and other outcomes. Finally, the team will produce an analysis of a select subset of institutions through comparative, in-depth case studies that detail how these public sector organizations operate and function. The team’s political economy lens will allow the research to go beyond mere funding levels to assess a fuller range of the market-shaping impacts these institutions have in the clean energy ecosystem, such as helping to prioritize clean energy technology development goals, de-risk future investment, and facilitate learning within and across industries.

Decarbonizing chemical manufacturing is one of the key steps needed to reduce emissions from the industrial sector, as chemical manufacturing accounts for 30% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The Decarbonizing Chemical Manufacturing Using Sustainable Electrification (DC-MUSE) is a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary research network headquartered at New York University that involves a range of faculty from across 14 different research institutions studying different aspects of decarbonizing chemical manufacturing, including such as how to replace high heat industrial processes with renewable-powered alternatives, how to coordinate power demand from the chemical industry with other grid needs, and how to design backup power options through the use of batteries and other technologies. The DC-MUSE network is in involved in the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, an effort backed by the National Science Foundation to strengthen connections between academia and industry, and DC-MUSE is working towards becoming an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC). DC-MUSE is led by Director André Taylor, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at New York University (NYU) and Deputy Director Elizabeth Biddinger, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the City University of New York. Building on previous Sloan Foundation support for DC-MUSE, this grant provides funding for three critical center functions that will help the network to grow and evolve. First, funds will support the role of a Managing Director, who is tasked with ensuring effective center management, outreach, and fundraising. Second, funds will provide support for a post-doctoral fellow who will assist in research coordination and management, working with faculty across the DC-MUSE network. Third, funds will support the organization of a New Research Directions small grants see fund that will enable DC-MUSE leadership to make 3-4 grants of around $25,000 each. The goal of this seed fund is to launch new collaborative research efforts related to decarbonizing chemical manufacturing, both among faculty already affiliated with DC-MUSE and as a way to engage collaborators from outside of the network.

This grant supports the continuation and expansion of a fellowship program aimed at advancing interdisciplinary doctoral student training related to the economic, engineering, and policy dimensions of transportation decarbonization. Research on decarbonizing transportation tends to be highly siloed along disciplinary lines, with economists and engineers utilizing different methodological approaches to understand consumer preferences for low-carbon transport options. However, integration of these disciplinary perspectives is needed to realize a more comprehensive understanding of the behavioral, social, and technological dimensions involved in decarbonizing transportation. This interdisciplinary transportation doctoral fellowship program will provide graduate students from four universities with a broader perspective on transportation decarbonization, train them in how to integrate different methods and approaches into their research, and connect those students with practitioners and decision-makers. This grant provides funding to extend this doctoral fellowship program from the original sites at the University of Maryland, College Park and Carnegie Mellon University to two additional universities that have strong track records on transportation decarbonization research rooted in both economics and engineering in Cornell University and the University of Michigan. The program is led by Joshua Linn, Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, and Kate Whitefoot, Associate Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and it now includes Ricardo Daziano, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Shanjun Li, Professor of Economics, at Cornell University and Anna Stefanopoulou, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Michigan. Each of the four participating universities will receive funding for one doctoral student fellowship per year, for a total of four students supported in each annual cohort and eight students to be supported in total over the grant period. Funds will support one year of stipend and tuition assistance for participating students, engagement activities with faculty both within and across institutions, an interdisciplinary reading group, interdisciplinary academic mentoring, and involvement of an external advisory group of practitioners who will provide real-world perspectives on prospective research projects. Funds will also support two research dissemination conferences to share findings across scholarly and practitioner communities.

The transition of the United States energy system away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy and other low-carbon energy sources will involve the greater use of critical minerals and metals. Critical minerals and metals are necessary components for renewable energy technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries. Domestic demand for these building blocks of the clean energy transition is projected to increase dramatically over the next decades, both in response to rising consumer demand and to domestic sourcing requirements in the Inflation Reduction Act. However, little attention has been paid to the issue of public perceptions of critical mineral and metal mining and how these views might shape future supply chains and policymaking. To address this gap, Mahelet Fikru and Kwame Awuah-Offeil at the Missouri University of Science and Technology will conduct a pair of nationally representative surveys to evaluate public perception of critical minerals and metals. The first survey will focus on gauging public awareness about the role that critical minerals and metals play in clean energy transitions, and it will study public perceptions of policies that aim to advance domestic critical mineral production. The second survey will ascertain how consumers value tradeoffs between different factors associated with the critical mineral inputs of clean energy technologies. In particular, this survey will study how consumers value the source of the critical minerals and metals in terms of whether or not those materials are produced domestically or abroad, the sustainability of the mining practices and environmental impact, and the ultimate cost of the clean energy technologies that use these mineral and metal inputs. Results from both surveys will be used to develop an economic model to investigate the impact of different critical mineral and metal policies on upstream mining companies and downstream clean energy technology manufacturers. The team will also use the model to examine which policies might be well suited to achieve the goals of a low-carbon energy system and develop a more sustainable domestic critical mineral and metal supply chain. Three peer-reviewed journal articles will report on findings, and the team will also make all survey materials, datasets, models, and code publicly available.