Washington (Platts)--20Apr2011/523 pm EDT/2123 GMT

The US Department of Energy's advanced research arm Wednesday said it will fund $130 million in research in five groundbreaking areas aimed at securing US energy independence.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy will invest $30 million each in the following projects: engineering plants to directly produce fuel; high energy advanced thermal storage; the development of rare earth metal alternatives; and electricity grid technology that will better allow more integration of renewable energy.

It will also spend $10 million in advanced solar power technology.

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As with previous research solicitations, this new funding will be available to universities, national labs and private sector researchers through a competitive application process.

"ARPA-E is unleashing American innovation to strengthen America's global competitiveness and win the clean energy race," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said. "In addition to creating new jobs, breakthroughs in clean energy technologies can reduce our country's dependence of foreign oil, decrease the cost of clean electricity and build a sustainable infrastructure for future generations of Americans."

DOE's ARPA-E aims to support high-risk, high-reward transformational research that can revolutionize the way the US consumes and produces energy, while improving US energy security and creating jobs.

ARPA-E, launched with $400 million in the 2009 economic stimulus package, recently received another $180 million in federal funding, in the fiscal 2011 spending bill that Congress passed last week. To date, the program has funded 121 projects in power electronics, advanced battery technologies, building cooling, electrofuels, grid energy storage, carbon capture and other areas.

Six of those projects have gone on to secure more than $100 million in outside private investment, DOE said. ARPA-E also recently signed an agreement with Duke Energy and the Electric Power Research Institute to develop some of ARPA-E's projects in pilot-scale tests.

--Herman Wang, herman_wang@platts.com