The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) rolled out one of the largest federally funded climate programs in history earlier this year. With funding from the Biden-Harris administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the new program, called the Industrial Demonstrations Program (IDP), tackles the notoriously emissions-intensive industrial sector.
Decarbonizing heavy industry is immensely important. It is not only a top priority for meeting climate goals, since industry lags behind other sectors in terms of reducing carbon emissions, but it can also accomplish important economic and environmental goals, like modernizing American manufacturing and addressing localized air pollution. We’ve previously written about the IDP’s formation and explained how the funding process will play out over time. Now, we take a closer look at the projects, identifying trends that will inform industrial decarbonization policy in the coming years.
Diversified bets: IDP’s approach to innovation
Before diving into the projects, it helps to put the IDP in the context of other major clean energy programs. With $6 billion in funding, the IDP is the third-largest program funded by OCED, which manages a portfolio of about $26 billion from the BIL and IRA. The IDP follows closely behind the Hydrogen Hubs ($8 billion) and Carbon Management ($7 billion) programs, but unlike those, which are dedicated to specific emerging climate solutions, the IDP spans the existing industrial sector, funding projects across multiple manufacturing industries to demonstrate a range of novel decarbonization approaches and technologies at scale. Its approach is to co-fund with private industry a diversity of projects and technologies with the goal of finding successful formulas and setting the stage for industry-wide adoption in the future.
Emerging themes and trends
In total, there are 33 projects across eight industry groups.
