Partnerships Grow at Clip of One per Day To Fast-Track Advanced Energy Solutions

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Bringing new technologies to market is not for the faint at heart. Slow down and you might lose development momentum. Move too fast and you could fall short on due diligence. Fail to anticipate hurdles and you may well sacrifice funding and customer base.

For decades, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has partnered with private companies, foundations, and public entities to overcome barriers to the rollout of low-cost, advanced energy innovations. Industry partners rely on the laboratory’s help to bridge the gap between research and the commercial marketplace. Government partners, including the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) as the nation’s largest energy consumer, depend on NREL’s evaluations of new technologies to reduce energy costs and enhance resilience. In Fiscal Year 2024 alone, the laboratory signed 365 new agreements with organizations across the United States and around the world, adding an average of one partner per day to the NREL portfolio.

Agreement Transactions by Market Sector

This chart shows the total number of agreements signed in Fiscal Year 2024 by market sector. The total includes single agreements with multiple partners.

Renewable energy technology innovators often find themselves at a precipice between basic research and a saleable product, sometimes referred to as the “valley of death.” Over the last 15 years, collaborations with NREL have allowed partners to overcome this dire commercialization challenge and make hundreds of innovations―from solar panels to electric car batteries, controls for the power grid, and energy efficient manufacturing methods―available to consumers, businesses, and communities. Each year, these alliances and other NREL activity pump as much as $1.9 billion into the U.S. economy, annually creating up to 8,200 jobs.

Along with other breakthroughs, NREL research and partnership projects have helped shift U.S. energy trends. Thanks to the strenuous efforts of players on all fronts, including the contributions of NREL and its partners, annual per capita U.S. consumption of energy is now 19% less and 35% fewer metric tons of carbon emissions are generated compared to the year NREL opened its doors.

A Team With the Right Stuff To Deliver on Far-Reaching Vision

Up until the Alliance for Sustainable Energy assumed operation of NREL in 2008, the laboratory’s partnerships often consisted of one-off short-term projects that made only narrow, incremental advances toward its ambitious goals. Then, as one of the few national laboratories to focus on applied innovations rather than fundamental science, DOE made partnerships a key factor in selecting the fittingly named Alliance as the operating contractor for NREL.

“DOE asked for increased attention on technology commercialization and partnerships, and the Alliance has delivered,” said Farris, who has led the laboratory’s partnership program since 2008.

NREL is now considered the go-to research and development (R&D) partner for renewable energy startups and established corporations across the country and worldwide.

The laboratory offers partners—which include commercial entities, government agencies, and foundations—technical assistance, knowledge, and tools. NREL’s wide-reaching program fosters public-private collaboration, leveraging the laboratory’s internationally renowned scientific capabilities and facilities with partner resources.

Partner companies use NREL’s proving grounds to reliably assess innovations at earlier stages of development. This reduces the technical and financial gambles assumed by industry in introducing new technologies and also diminishes risks for the laboratory by diversifying its foundation of funding and projects.

Not only do many NREL researchers bring business-world perspective to projects, most members of the partnership team also have technical expertise, with experience in sectors including chemistry, building efficiency, computer technology, aeronautics, utilities, and engineering. Paired with finance and management consulting backgrounds, as well as knowledge gained in MBA programs, partnership specialists and licensing executives are able to assess both the scientific and business merits of opportunities.

"Our partnership specialists’ unique combination of technical knowledge and market expertise gives researchers confidence in the team’s input,” Strategic Partnerships Office Director Andrea Watson said. “They know our involvement will help speed the progress of projects from concept to prototype and into the real world."

Most importantly, these partnerships create a pipeline for continual expansion of laboratory capabilities, while establishing a model to maximize the impact of NREL’s research and accelerate the nation’s adoption of renewable energy technologies.

The Bottom Line on Partnerships

Over the almost five decades since NREL was originally founded as the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), DOE has invested approximately $20.2 billion in NREL’s world-class research staff, facilities, and equipment. Recognizing the tremendous value in bolstering that investment to advance their technologies and energy goals, partners have brought $1.1 billion in project funding to the laboratory since 2009. More than 9,000 partner projects have helped make this a two-way street, contributing approximately 15% to NREL’s annual business volume over the last 15 years.

Partnership Funding Since 2009

Partnership Agreeements Since 2009

Even with these impressive sums, the bottom line for NREL leaders is far from a simple dollars-and-cents calculation.

"We partner for impact. NREL seeks strategic partnerships that further our vision and build NREL technical capabilities, while at the same time helping partners reach their energy goals," Watson said. "The strategic partnerships team makes sure what we’re doing here at the lab makes the greatest possible difference in R&D, clean tech industries, the U.S. economy, and Americans' lives."

NREL's unprecedented pace of growth in the volume of its partnership agreements, which has broken annual records 15 years running, reflects the laboratory’s impact on real-world problems. Additions to NREL’s large portfolio of partnership agreements, which increased by more than 7% from Fiscal Year 2023 to Fiscal Year 2024 to reach an all-time high of $170 million in non-DOE funding, reflect the relevance of NREL research to industry and public-sector funders.

Partner Funding by Market Sector

This chart shows the total amount of funding to NREL in Fiscal Year 2024 by market sector.

Today, the number of innovations registered by the laboratory each year is four times that of just 15 years ago, with an annual average of 258 inventions. This amounts to at least triple the number of innovations per researcher than found at any other national laboratory and more than double the average of other applied science labs.

“Each patent application filed on an NREL innovation is more than just a notch on a scientist’s CV or a design schematic to be filed away,” NREL Licensing Team Lead Eric Payne said. “Partners build entire lines of business, even companies, around inventions they license from NREL.”

With dozens of licenses signed each year, partners begin to shepherd NREL technologies into the marketplace. Seventy-four of the commercial offerings resulting from these partnerships have been recognized with R&D 100 Awards, known as the “Oscars of Innovation.”

Success can be measured not just in the numbers of partners and patents secured each year but also by the long-term relationships and collaborative efforts that endure year after year. Many NREL partnerships span decades, with companies turning to NREL time and time again for support. Some partners have collaborated with the laboratory for over 30 years.

Collaboration To Tackle the Most Pressing Issues on Earth―and Beyond

Whether through licensing NREL inventions, bringing independently developed innovations to the lab for assessment and validation, or collaborating fully on R&D, the laboratory’s partnerships have helped address some of the thorniest energy issues from the micro and the macro level―and from the Earth to the sun and back.

Some of these projects, such as the groundbreaking LA100 study, explore the potential of sweeping advanced energy transformations to touch millions of people for generations to come. In partnership with the government of the nation’s second-largest city and its utility operator, NREL analyses verified the feasibility of powering Los Angeles using 100% renewable energy, with programs that equitably benefit the nearly 4 million people who call this major metropolis home.

“In the next 20 years, LA will invest $70 billion to $90 billion to implement solutions based on NREL assessments,” Farris said. “Eventually, this initiative is expected to create thousands of new jobs, while virtually eliminating the city’s carbon footprint.”

A growing number of partnerships reach past U.S. borders, bolstering the nation’s interests and allies around the world―and beyond. NREL’s work with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is helping strengthen the resiliency of vulnerable energy grids in more than 55 countries, addressing hazards posed by aging infrastructure, cybersecurity breaches, natural disasters, and political instability in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Caribbean. Similarly, laboratory collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense on advanced microgrid technologies and energy storage devices allows even the most far-flung military installations to rely on an uninterrupted electricity supply. This includes missions that take place outside Earth’s orbit, with NASA astronauts depending on NREL-developed high-performance batteries to power their spacesuits.

Perhaps the laboratory’s most emblematic and enduring partnership involves harnessing the power of another celestial body, the sun, in collaboration with photovoltaic (PV) manufacturer First Solar (originally known as Solar Cells). The company came on board as NREL’s first commercial partner to help demonstrate the potential of cadmium telluride solar panel technology developed by the laboratory with DOE funding. Thirty years later, First Solar’s CadTel cell has achieved more than 22% efficiency, delivering one of the lowest levelized costs of electricity among all energy sources and providing a competitive alternative to offshore-sourced silicon-based PV technologies―all while establishing the company as an international leader with several billion dollars in revenue a year and nearly 7,000 employees.

Monitoring the Pulse of Industry

How does NREL connect with the right partners?

“Engaging with industry gives us insight into market needs,” Miller said. “Our existing partnerships and ongoing outreach create a beneficial feedback loop, which helps NREL understand what capabilities will be relevant now and in the future.”

For example, NREL took note of surging industry interest in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) made from biomass. This has led to partnerships with firms including SAFFiRE Renewables (recently acquired by Southwest Airlines), Comstock Fuels, and Crysalis Biosciences using technology developed by NREL. With ongoing support and favorable market conditions, some experts speculate that these facilities in four states could potentially produce up to 10 million gallons of SAF each year with a carbon intensity as much as 90% smaller than that of conventional jet fuel. Eventually, DOE hopes the new industry will support 70,000 jobs and stimulate $44 billion in investments.

NREL-driven forums convening industry, research, and government leaders to exchange ideas, share experiences, and identify needed resources also spark new collaboration and regularly reveal new opportunities amongst participants. Resulting partner projects often help get advanced energy businesses off the ground and assist organizations of all sizes to improve, validate, and de-risk technologies, then speed up efforts to move innovations into the real world.

Once a match is found, NREL’s flexible systems ensure the process is more streamlined than many partners anticipate when entering into agreements with federally governed institutions.

“There isn’t just one way to engage with the lab,” Miller said. “With so many forms of partner contracts, we can tailor agreements to match the needs of individual projects.”

Just like any relationship, partners need space to grow and adjust to shifting demands. NREL’s approach offers the flexibility to adapt as new priorities surface. For example, the arc of the laboratory’s 10-year, $100 million partnership with ExxonMobil evolved as the corporation went through a string of organizational changes. One ExxonMobil project that started as a three-year examination of the combustion properties of biofuels has grown into a multiyear collaboration exploring requirements for refinery scale-up and emissions trade-offs.

The laboratory also looks for ways to help startups over hurdles, enabling new businesses to get established.

“We’ve consistently seen that when cleantech startups partner with a national laboratory, they increase patent application filings,” Payne said. As a result, these startups are 67% more likely to increase venture capital funding and boost initial public offering valuations.

A Future That Relies on a Handshake

As NREL looks toward the future, it knows that partnerships will be crucial to meeting ongoing energy challenges. The laboratory is setting even more ambitious goals, making sure it is prepared to support the nation’s ever-growing need for renewable energy solutions. The team remains intent on making sure partner projects continue to deliver quality innovations with wide-reaching impact.

This refers to rapidly growing demands that data centers and electric vehicle charging systems are putting on the electricity grid, among other factors. One NREL partner, Xcel Energy, hoped to replace its coal plants and cut carbon emissions 80% by 2050, but the data-center boom has posed significant obstacles to these plans.

It is anticipated that future partnerships will span from the global to the local level. The laboratory’s leadership in the energy-security arena and on international projects continues to grow, supporting an expanding portfolio of U.S. government agencies, along with those of allied nations. At the same time, closer to home, NREL is intent on working with communities to make sure the renewable energy future reaches the most vulnerable U.S. populations.

While keeping all of this in motion, NREL is also working to strike the ideal balance of DOE projects and work with non-DOE partners.

“DOE has actively encouraged our diversification, understanding that a critical mass of work with partners helps makes the lab relevant, healthy and strong,” Keller said. "The common denominator with every partnership is alignment with NREL’s mission while acting as a multiplier for DOE’s support, to deploy innovations at scale that advance clean energy goals."

Learn more about how your organization can partner with NREL, and hear directly from NREL partners in NREL's Partner Testimonials video series.