Obama Administration announces $777 million for Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs)

The Obama Administration is following through on a major campaign promise: funding basic energy science. 

Do you want Hope?
(Or maybe long term optimism!)

Stop looking for 'short term' solutions and quick fixes to global energy challenges. We need disruptive breakthroughs that enable new energy systems and business models.

Start with basic science.

A Good Day for Energy Science
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science announced that it will invest $777 million in Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) over the next five years as we attempt to 'accelerate the scientific breakthroughs needed to build a new 21st-century energy economy'.  The 46 new multi-million-dollar EFRCs [PDF list] will be established at universities, national laboratories, nonprofit organizations, and private firms across the United States with partnerships extending around the globe. 

The EFRCs will focus on a wide range of projects (PDF) 'ranging from solar energy and electricity storage to materials sciences, biofuels, advanced nuclear systems, and carbon capture and sequestration' and will engage 'nearly 700 senior investigators and employ, on a full- or part-time basis, over 1,100 postdoctoral associates, graduate students, undergraduate students, and technical staff.'

Getting Serious about CleanTech Industries
Building a Bridge to Molecules: A Nano-Bio Energy Age
The 'Cleantech' Industry vision promoted by entrepreneurs, activists and political leaders is not likely to be based on technologies and energy systems that exist today. (Translation: We are at the beginning of this new era of energy. And it is not likely to be an extension of the past or present!)

How do you create cleantech industries?

Be the economy that launches the Industrial Age of Nanoscale Molecular Engineering.  

Learn how to manipulate carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, light, enzymes and metals at the nanoscale (1 billionth of a meter)- and you have the new 21st century drivers of economic growth.  

Nanoscale materials science and Bio energy sciences are growing into giant new industry sectors that will dwarf today's major industry sectors. Science is the foundation for real green collar jobs of the future. 

Smart Money - Right Time, Right Ideas, Right Teams
Funding Basic Science not Mystery Science- Nano is no Joke!