Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential (SCALEUP)

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In response to the COVID-19 public health emergency, ARPA-E has modified the SCALEUP FOA. The Preliminary Application submission phase has been reopened to allow all prospective Applicants the opportunity to apply. Preliminary Applications previously received may be revised under the modified SCALEUP requirements described herein.

Accordingly, ARPA-E has:

  • Increased the Total Amount to be Awarded to approximately $60 million
  • Revised the deadline for the submission of Preliminary Applications to May 7, 2020 at 9:30 am ET.
  • Revised the deadlines for the submission of replies to Preliminary Application Reviewer comments, Semi-Finalist and Grant notifications, and submission of Full Applications and Full Application reviewer comments.
  • Revised Section III.B.1-3 and Section VI.B.4 to amend Prime Recipient cost share amounts and payment requirements respectively.
  • Revised Section IV.A.2 and Section VII.F.2, to address withdrawal and revision of Preliminary Applications and optional Small Business Grant Applications respectively, that were previously submitted to ARPA-E.
  • Inserted Section IV.D to set forth formatting requirements for revised and resubmitted Preliminary Applications and Small Business Grant Applications.
  • Revised Section V.A and Section VII.H, to address Merit Review of Preliminary Applications and optional Small Business Grant Applications respectively, that are amended solely to change the Prime Recipient cost shares amount or are unchanged from prior timely submissions.
  • Revised Section V.C to revise the anticipated dates for award negotiation selections and award effective dates.
  • Canceled the in-person SCALEUP Workshop.
  • Provided information on participating in the Semi-Finalists Launch Pad website, the Semi-Finalist Bootcamp Webinar, and the SCALEUP virtual Workshop Series. See Cover Page and Section IV.A of the FOA.

To obtain a copy of the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) please go to the ARPA-E website at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov. ARPA-E will not review or consider submissions submitted through means other than ARPA-E eXCHANGE. For detailed guidance on using ARPA-E eXCHANGE, please refer to the ARPA-E eXCHANGE User Guider at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx.

The Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential (SCALEUP) solicitation provides a vital mechanism for the support of innovative energy R&D that complements ARPA-E’s primary R&D focus on early-stage transformational energy technologies that still require proof-of-concept.

ARPA-E’s mission is to develop transformational energy technologies in support of U.S. national security and economic competitiveness. ARPA-E funds the R&D of technologies to build and maintain U.S. technological leadership in highly competitive global energy markets, thus supporting American jobs and economic growth. ARPA-E’s authorizing statute directs the Agency to develop linkages between its sponsored applied research and the marketplace.[ These linkages are central to realizing the public’s return on technology investments.

An enduring challenge to ARPA-E’s mission is that even technologies that achieve substantial technical advancement under ARPA-E support are at risk of being stranded in their development path once ARPA-E funding ends (averaging $2.5M over three years). ARPA-E-funded technologies typically face significant remaining technical risks upon completion of an award’s funding period. Experience across ARPA-E’s diverse energy portfolios, and with a wide range of investors, indicates that pre-commercial “scaling” projects are critical to establishing that performance and cost parameters can be met in practice for these very early stage technologies. These pre-commercial scaling projects aim to translate the performance achieved at bench scale to commercially scalable versions of the technology, integrate the technology with broader systems, provide extended performance data, and validate the manufacturability and reliability of new energy technologies. (These projects are often termed “pre-pilot” development in different industries) Success in these scaling projects would enable industry, investors, and partners to justify substantial commitments of financial resources, personnel, production facilities, and materials to develop promising ARPA-E technologies into early commercial products.

The SCALEUP FOA builds upon ARPA-E-funded technologies by scaling the most promising. Stranding promising ARPA-E-funded technologies in their development pathways leaves substantial intellectual property developed with American taxpayer dollars vulnerable to adoption by foreign competitors, who can and do capture it for continued development – and economic benefit – overseas. This harms national competitiveness, as U.S. industries often lose the lead on the development, scaling, and manufacturing of technologies necessary to compete in rapidly evolving global energy markets. These scaling energy technology projects will meet ARPA-E’s statutory direction to achieve the above goals by “accelerating transformational technological advances in areas that industry by itself is not likely to undertake because of technical and financial uncertainty”.