A good clean tech transfer tool recently got a little bit better. 

Last month the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that its Energy Innovation Portal, an online tool designed to link DOE energy technologies with potential licensing and commercialization partners, now offers business-friendly descriptions of over 300 technologies.

These marketing summaries provide overviews of the particular innovations, with each including a description of the technology, its benefits, and a list of possible applications and industries in which it could be applied.

The Energy Innovation Portal includes 11,721 patents and 3,555 patent applications relating to a wide variety of energy technologies developed by DOE national laboratories and other research institutions. 

There have already been notable success stories involving some of these patents, including the lithium-ion batteries used in the Chevy Volt, which leverage several Argonne National Laboratory patents directed to composite cathode materials.

It is also increasingly common for clean tech startups to jump start their businesses by licensing in technology from a national lab.  

For example, PrimeStar Solar, a Colorado startup, is developing cadmium-telluride thin-film photovoltaics using technology licensed from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.  Similarly, Ampulse, also in Colorado, has licensed thin-film deposition technology from both NREL and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Getting clean technologies into the hands of those willing and able to commercialize them is critically important, and the Energy Innovation Portal is playing a major role in this process.

• Previous Entry: Separation and Simplification Give Intematix LEDs an Edge
• Next Entry: Novozymes Ethanol Enzyme Patent (Barely) Survives Summary Judgment