‘The Google of clean energy’

Argonne launches incubator program for entrepreneurs with eye on future

Argonne National Laboratory, all 1,700 acres of it, will be the site of a new incubator program called Chain Reaction Innovations that will help scientific entrepreneurs gain research and development expertise and technology to launch new ideas. (Courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)

The Mira supercomputer, fifth-fastest in the world, will be used by participants in Argonne National Laboratory’s new Chain Reaction Innovations program. (Courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)

Participants in a new incubator program launching at Argonne National Laboratory will have access to the lab’s technology, including the Advanced Photon Source, the nation’s highest-energy X-ray source, which can be used for tasks such as pinpointing defects in materials. (Courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)

Peter Littlewood, director of Argonne National Laboratory near Darien, introduces the lab’s first technology incubator program, called Chain Reaction Innovators, on Tuesday. It aims to help about a dozen scientific entrepreneurs develop clean energy ideas into new products. (Marie Wilson/mwilson@dailyherald.com)

Andreas Roelofs, director of Chain Reaction Innovations at Argonne National Laboratory, describes the new program Tuesday as a way to help entrepreneurs with scientific ideas to improve clean energy develop those ideas into products. (Marie Wilson/mwilson@dailyherald.com)

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By Marie Wilson (mwilson@dailyherald.com)

Argonne National Laboratory wants to start a chain reaction in clean energy.

The lab on Tuesday launched its first technology incubator, Chain Reaction Innovations, a program designed to help entrepreneurs with ideas for the clean energy of the future develop those ideas into products — a mission not drawing the financial support it once did.

With $3 million from the U.S. Department of Energy and $1 million from Argonne , the program expects to support a dozen projects that could “change the landscape of energy,” said Mark Johnson, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing office.

The right idea, aided by the research and resources of a national laboratory, could help the country decrease greenhouse gas emissions and slow the process of global warming. It even could become what David Danielson, assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy with the Department of Energy, called the “Google of clean energy.”

The new incubator program is a necessary resource because clean energy is slow and costly to develop; venture capitalists are not funding energy ideas like they did a decade ago, Danielson said.

“Energy doesn’t fit their model. It takes too long,” he said. “We could have a lost generation of clean energy technology entrepreneurs when we need them the most.”

Chain Reaction Innovators aims to capture those entrepreneurs and connect them with expert researchers, world-class technology and mentorship at Argonne, near Darien in southeast DuPage County.

Argonne is the second among 17 national laboratories to offer a technology incubator after the idea got started two years ago at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Entrepreneurs there are working on ideas such as a device to harvest energy from ocean waves and an energy converter that creates electric current.

“We’re going to be nurturing innovation right here,” said Peter Littlewood, Argonne’s director. “I can’t wait to see what game-changing things happen with that.”

Argonne’s new incubator aims to have its first participant by this fall, said Andreas Roelofs, director of the program and of Argonne’s Nano Design Works. The program is designed to last two years, and innovators will get a salary along with funding and research help for their work.

Innovators with ideas for new ways to store wind- or solar-generated energy, new battery designs or new ways to develop sensors or detectors that can be installed in “smart” devices are the types who would be perfect for Chain Reaction Innovators, Roelofs said. These ventures match Argonne’s areas of expertise in batteries, nanotechnology and energy systems, he said.

When entrepreneurs apply starting this summer, Roelofs will play matchmaker between the ones with the best ideas and the 1,600 scientists at Argonne.

Participating innovators will have access to all the same equipment Argonne employees do.

They’ll be able to run calculations and predictions using Mira, the fifth-fastest computer in the world. They’ll also have access to the Advanced Photon Source, the brightest X-ray source in the nation. Roelofs said this can help them, for example, observe what happens inside a new type of battery while it is charged and discharged.

Innovators from across the country are invited to submit a pre-application for Chain Reaction Innovations at anl.gov/work-argonne/chain-reaction-innovations to be notified when the application process begins.