Advanced by Americans: A Year of Energy Innovation

EERE’s Top 2024 Accomplishments

• EERE investments led to the development of an R&D 100 award-winning, high-efficiency combined heat and power device that can simultaneously generate electricity and provide heat to homes and businesses, all in a single device that runs on zero-carbon fuels like renewable biogas and hydrogen. 

 

• Another EERE-funded technology that earned recognition from R&D 100 was ORNL’s Real-Time Evaluator (RTE) for fast and accurate installation of prefabricated building components. Funded by EERE’s Building Technologies Office, the RTE uses advanced software, surveying tools, and 3D digital building models to guide the precise placement of prefabricated components. This tool can reduce component assembly time by up to 25% and curb the probability of human error.

 

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• In August, the DOE-sponsored Utah FORGE field laboratory successfully stimulated a geothermal well, demonstrating a capacity to enhance the flow of water or steam necessary to draw geothermal energy to the surface. This breakthrough could help unlock the immense potential of enhanced geothermal systems—a steady, flexible energy resource that could power the equivalent of 65 million U.S. homes around the clock, regardless of weather conditions. Whereas previous stimulations achieved 70% fluid recovery rates, this stimulation achieved a fluid recovery rate of more than 90%, suggesting that this humanmade reservoir will perform well over time and that a significant amount of heat can be extracted from it and turned into electricity.

 

• Scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville devised a new method for monitoring grid inertia—the balance between the push of power supply and the pull of power demand. This monitoring system, developed with funding from EERE’s Water Power Technologies Office, provides utilities and grid coordinating authorities with a new way to predict and avoid potential outages as the grid increasingly relies on new, intermittent renewable energy sources.

 

• An EERE-funded collaboration between Argonne National Laboratory and Toyota has advanced the development of a direct recycling process for cathodes in lithium-ion batteries. The perfection of direct recycling techniques could reduce America’s reliance on foreign sources of battery materials and shore up the domestic supply chain for our growing EV industry. 

 

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• In March, ORNL researchers demonstrated that a light-duty passenger EV can be wirelessly charged at 100-kW with 96% efficiency using polyphase electromagnetic coupling coils with rotating magnetic fields. Several months later, a second test successfully demonstrated wireless power transfer at 270-kW. ORNL’s patented wireless charging system is a breakthrough achievement in fast and efficient wireless charging for passenger EVs—one that has the potential to substantially reduce charging time and increase range.

 

• Eight manufacturers participating in the Residential Cold Climate Heat Pump Challenge successfully field-tested their upgraded, cold-climate heat pumps in the Northeast, Midwest, and Mountain West regions of the United States. This new generation of heat pumps can operate at 5°F (–15°C) or lower, with energy performance well beyond current best-in-class products. 

 

• EERE-funded research and development in alternative fuels and feedstocks resulted in a surge of domestic sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production, which grew from 5 million gallons in 2021 to 52 million gallons through the first six months of 2024. The expanding market for SAF will create new jobs in America’s world-leading biofuels industry, while giving American farmers the opportunity to earn more money during off-seasons by providing feedstocks to this new market. The use of low-carbon fuel has, as of mid-2024, helped the aviation industry avoid 300,000 metric tons of carbon emissions, and major airlines are buying in.

 

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• EERE helped fund DOE’s first hybrid diesel-electric research vessel, known as the RV Resilience. Dedicated in August, this vessel demonstrates the potential to remove carbon emissions from marine transportation while simultaneously supporting ocean research and novel marine-energy technologies. 

 

• EERE’s technical assistance and technology-validation efforts shepherded several new energy technologies into the American marketplace. For example, EERE’s H2 Refuel H-Prize helped one business validate a state-of-the-art hydrogen fueler that can produce up to 10 kilograms of hydrogen per day and support both fuel-cell-powered trucks and passenger vehicles. One of these units is now operational at Lincoln Financial Field, home of the Philadelphia Eagles. 

 

• EERE expanded its workforce development and entrepreneurship programs this year to support the energy workforce, which grew at more than twice the rate of the overall U.S. labor market in 2023. We welcomed our largest cohorts to date in both the Energy Innovator Fellowship and Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program, both of which provide valuable, hands-on experience to budding energy professionals.