How to Seek Grants for Alternative Energy R & D

If you are someone who wishes to begin researching and developing alternative energy technologies and you would want to be set up as a not-for-profit organization or entity, you will want to look into getting government grants, on both the state and the federal levels. Government grants for alternative energy research and development have been highly touted by politicians on local, state, and federal levels in recent years, all the way up to the President himself. This is due to the fact that we now recognize as a society that we need to seek out and develop alternative energy sources to those of the fossil fuels that we presently depend upon, as these fuels are not only slowly but surely running out (at least cheap access to digging them up is running out), but also damaging to the environment and air quality.

There is a fairly vast array of government grant programs available for you to check into. The great and most important thing to keep in mind about a government grant is that it's essentially free money. It is not a loan, you don't pay any interest, and you don't ever have to give the money back. However, qualifying for these grants, as you might imagine with something involving the government and free money, has quite a lot of restrictions attached to it. Not only is qualification based on purpose and need in the eyes and opinions of government bureaucrats, but just because you qualify does not mean that you necessarily get the grant. As Marshall McLuen put it, “the medium is the message”. The fact of the matter is that it is typically easier to apply for and qualify to receive a business loan—but then, that would not be free money, that would be something you owed to someone, and with interest on top.

There are professional grant writers who know how to write proposals in such a way that they get around the heavy load of restrictions set up by the government, and you might need to resort to one of these. Even governments employ professional grant writers to seek money from other branches of the government, such as a country government needing funding from the state or the federal government. These people also keep abreast of what government grants are still or newly available and what ones have been removed from the table. It's an intricate web, so one must not get tangled up in when seeking needed financial backing for alternative energy research and development. In fact, it is so complex that in the last decade or so the ranks of profession writers, as both individuals and as entire companies, have swelled. It is a profitable business—and this can make it fraught with illegal actions and controversial claims.

Nevertheless, each year there are many thousands of grants awarded throughout the United States for the purpose of helping the public. And again, with the government endorsement of grant money to be given to alternative energy researchers, you could very well get what you seek.

Government Grants for Alternative Energy

In his State of the Union Address for 2007, President George W. Bush called for a 22% increase in federal grants for research and development of alternative energy. However, in a speech he gave soon after, he said to those assembled, I recognize that there has been some interesting mixed signals when it comes to funding.

Where the mixed signals were coming from concerned the fact that at the same time the President was calling on more government backing for alternative energy research and development, the NREL—the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of Golden, Colardo—was laying off workers and contractors left and right. Apparently, the Laboratory got the hint, because soon after the State of the Union Address, everyone was re-hired. The second speech of the President's was actually given at the NREL. There is almost unanimous public support for the federal backing through research grants, tax breaks, and other financial incentives of research and development of alternative energy sources.

The NREL is the nation's leading component of the National Bioenergy Center, a “virtual” center that has no central bricks and mortar office. The NREL's raison d'etre is the advancing of the US Department of Energy's and the United States' alternative energy objectives. The laboratory's field researchers and staff scientists, in the words of Laboratory Director Dan Arvizu, “support critical market objectives to accelerate research from scientific innovations to market-viable alternative energy solutions. At the core of this strategic direction are NREL's research and technology development areas. These areas span from understanding renewable resources for energy, to the conversion of these resources to renewable electricity and fuels, and ultimately to the use of renewable electricity and fuels in homes, commercial buildings, and vehicles.” The federally-backed Laboratory directly helps along the United States' objectives for discovering renewable alternative fuels for powering our economy and our lifestyles.

The NREL is set up to have several areas of expertise in alternative energy research and development. It spearheads research and development efforts into renewable sources of electricity; these would include such things as solar power, wind power, biomass power, and geothermal power. It also spearheads research and development of renewable fuels for powering our vehicles such as biomass and biodiesel fuels and hydrogen fuel cells. Then, it seeks to develop plans for integrated system enginnering; this includes bringing alternative energy into play within buildings, electrical grids and delivery systems, and transportation infrastructures. The Laboratory is also set up for strategic development and analysis of alternative energy objectives through the forces of economics, market analysis and planning, and alternative energy investment portfolios structurings.

The NREL is additionally equipped with a Technology Transfer Office. This Office supports laboratory scientists and engineers in the practical application of and ability to make a living from their expertise and the technologies they develop. NREL's research and development staff and its facilities are recognized for their remarkable prowess by private industry, which is reflected in the hundreds of collaborative projects and licensed technologies that the Laboratory now has with both public and private partners.