The US Department of Energy has issued a call for innovative energy project as part Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) funding opportunity. Applicants can see the parameters of the project in this document. The kinds of projects ARPA-E is looking for are described as follows:
ARPA-E exists to support transformational, rather than incremental research. Technologies develop along learning curves (Figure 1). Following the creation of a technology, refinements to that technology and the economies of scale that accrue as manufacturing and widespread distribution develop drive technology down that learning curve until meaningful improvements accrue only slowly. While this incremental improvement of technology is important to the ultimate success of a technology in the marketplace, ARPA-E exists to fund transformational research – i.e., research that creates fundamentally new learning curves rather than moving existing technologies down their learning curves.
Among the many types of energy projects that are suggested is a category called: “nuclear fuel cycles, hybrid fission-fusion reactors,” and in that category is listed “low energy nuclear reactions”. Maybe this is a small sign that US Government officials are beginning to recognize that there could be merit in LENR.
Further discussion and analysis of this development can be found in articles at Forbes, and New Energy Times