GreenBeat

Choosing Google’s Mountain View, Calif. campus as the venue for another big federal cleantech announcement, Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu launched a $151 million round of government grants for unusual, clearly high-risk projects geared to ward fighting global warming.

“We are trying to hit home runs, not base hits,” Chu states boldly, emphasizing that it only makes sense for groundbreaking technology to come out of Silicon Valley, the home of so many other earth-shattering innovations (thus the Google locale). “These are ‘out-of-the-box’ approaches.”

About 37 grants averaging $4 million each — spread across the clean energy sector — have been distributed. The department touted a liquid metal battery project out of MIT, development of bacteria for producing solar hydrocarbon biofuels, synthetic enzymes designed for carbon sequestration and low-cost light emitting-diode systems as four projects receiving backing via the grant program.

The grants, varying in amounts like the other funding programs out of the DOE, will be administered by the Advanced Research projects Agency-Energy, also known as Arpa-e, a new federal body molded in the image of the Defense Departments Darpa program — the organization that funded high-risk research in areas applicable to national security during the last century. Arpa-e, headed up by Lawrence Berkeley National Labroatory scientist Arun Majumdar, received $400 million via the federal stimulus package in April.

Obama first publicized these grants in the spring, vowing to provide the necessary funding for bolder, more innovative environmental projects. As a result, applications for the money flooded in from more than 3,600 candidates. The DOE said it winnowed this massive pile down to the final 37 by looking at each project’s technical feasibility but also its potential for “high impact.”

So far, the grant recipients are spread over 17 states — hopefully jumpstarting green employment and local investment (especially in Massachusetts and Colorado where there seemed to be a high concentration of projects). About 43 percent of them were small businesses (Foro Energy, Exelus, Envia), 35 percent were educational institutions (Stanford University, MIT, Arizona State University)  and 19 percent were large corporations (General Motors). The DOE says that another wave of recipients will be chosen and announced later this fall — which could mean as soon as next month.

Here’s a full list of those selected in the first, round including, how much they received and what they plan to use it for:

ARPA-E_Project_Selections –

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