Supercharging the Innovation Engine

It’s an exciting day for the Breakthrough Energy policy team. Since the historic policy victories of the past few years, many have been asking, “What’s next for climate and clean energy policy?” The answer is: a lot. From reforms that enable faster deployment, to new transmission rules, to implementing those historic laws most effectively, we’ve been focused on a few important next steps across the clean energy spectrum.

Yet, we live and breathe clean energy innovation here—after all, our goal is to accelerate progress across every source of emissions by driving down the cost of clean technologies.

We must examine what more the government can do to further accelerate innovation. We believe the answer is the Fast Track program.

Fast Track is our roadmap for the government to expedite the discovery and development of breakthrough clean energy technologies. It would be a major upgrade to the US government’s innovation engine and would help turn innovations into the solutions we need to reach net zero.

Read our white paper to explore the Fast Track proposal.

Why a Fast Track Program?

Thanks to the recent investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, the Department of Energy (DOE) has more resources than ever to support late-stage energy innovations.

But despite incredible progress, many promising companies still face valleys of death that prevent them from becoming real-world solutions. The current DOE programs face several challenges—from focusing on specific technologies to good old-fashioned federal bureaucracy.

We can make some common-sense changes to improve DOE’s ability to move early-stage innovative ideas toward commercial demonstrations. Can you imagine how much we could achieve if we streamlined federal bureaucracy and bridged gaps between federal programs, allowing for the rapid development and deployment of critical climate innovations?

Our goals:

• Close gaps at DOE to bridge valleys of death for clean technologies.
• Provide increased flexibility and access to federal support.
• Nurture technological and commercial progress.

The Fast Track program would ignite ingenuity and create a pipeline of groundbreaking technologies to help us achieve our ambitious climate goals in record time.

Fast Track accelerating innovators to market.

What is Fast Track?

Fast Track is a proposed DOE program designed to bridge gaps and accelerate progress. Here’s what that means:

Fast Track aims to bridge gaps that exist in the patchwork of funding. This means redefining the types of innovations that can receive support and ensure that it’s available through all stages of development.

Unlike traditional DOE programs focused on specific technologies, Fast Track would adopt a technology-neutral approach. This opens the door to any solution with high potential. The program’s resources would be allocated to ideas with a clear path to market, emphasizing market adoption at every stage, from initial exploration to pilot-stage demonstration.

Fast Track aims to accelerate the progress of startups and innovators seeking support. This is about ensuring the government uses existing tools to quickly and responsibly move startups and innovators into the program and towards commercialization. During the program, Fast Track would be nimble, ensuring that support can adapt to the normal twists and turns in the innovation process.

A representative comparison of the trajectory of an innovation supported by Fast Track and one seeking support through traditionally administered federal programs. Figure shows stages of the innovation process as a function of time.

Fueling Climate Solutions

While Fast Track is a bold plan, it’s also within reach for DOE to build something this transformative. There’s already so much momentum at the agency today, and Fast Track would take it to the next level.

We built Fast Track drawing on best practices from existing federal innovation programs, on feedback from the startup and innovator community, and on an understanding of the resources and tools DOE already has in place today—including open solicitations, authorities that allow for rapid selection processes, and milestone-based approaches to funding. The biggest innovation in this proposal is combining these aspects intentionally to bring priority technologies to market faster than ever before.

Innovation is the key to solving the climate crisis. From wind and solar to batteries and materials, the federal government has supported a variety of key clean energy breakthroughs. But the speed of climate change is outpacing our solutions. We need to pick up the pace dramatically, and having DOE provide end-to-end innovation support will be a game-changer for commercializing the climate solutions we need.

Learn more about our Fast Track proposal here.