BIRD Energy invests $9.75 million in Israel-U.S clean energy projects
BIRD Energy invests $9.75 million in Israel-U.S clean energy projects
“Strengthening technology cooperation between the U.S. and Israel is more important than ever,” said Jaron Lotan, Executive Director at BIRD Foundation.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Israel’s Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure (MoE), and the Israel Innovation Authority have selected nine clean energy projects that were approved to receive $9.75 million under the Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Energy program. The projects address a variety of topics such as agrivoltaics, battery technology, CO2 reduction, energy efficiency, solar energy, and energy storage.
Projects that could qualify for BIRD Energy funding must include one American and one Israeli company, or a company from one country paired with a university or research institution from the other. Qualified projects must contribute at least 50% to project costs and commit to repayments if they find commercial success.
The total value of the approved projects reached $27 million, including $9.75 million in cost-share funding. The approved projects are:
- Bar Ilan R&D Company (Ramat Gan, Israel), the technology transfer office of Bar Ilan University, and Forge Nano (Thornton, CO) to develop advanced flexible thin film coatings by molecular layer deposition for improved high-capacity anodes.
- SolarPaint (Yokneam Illit, Israel) and Lippert Components (Elkhart, IN) to develop a unique solar awning – a flexible and rollable solar panel suitable for RVs, residential balconies, and more.
- Groundwork BioAg (Mazor, Israel) and Verdesian Life Sciences U.S. (Cary, NC) to collaborate on developing solutions to enhance soil carbon sequestration and provide agricultural benefits by integrating mycorrhiza species, strains, and nitrogen-fixing bacteria targeting corn and soybean crops.
- CarbonBlue (Haifa, Israel) and Energy & Environmental Research Center (Grand Forks, ND) to scale up and commercialize ocean-based carbon dioxide removal technology for the desalination industry.
- Boson Energy Ltd. (Modi'in, Israel) and Drexel University’s (Philadelphia, PA) C. & J. Nyheim Plasma Institute to develop a next-generation tar cracking system for gasification projects.
- PowerPlug (Tel Aviv, Israel) and Cirrus Nexus (New York, NY) to develop an AI-driven SaaS-based platform for monitoring, analyzing, and reducing the IT carbon footprint across on-premise IT devices, on-premise data centers, and cloud resources.
- AIR EV (Pardes Hanna, Israel) and Nidec Motor Corporation (St. Louis, MO) to develop an electric motor tailored for mid-size eVTOL aircraft.
- Trigo Solar (Sde Hemed, Israel) and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Sponsored Research Services (College Station, TX) to demonstrate a water-energy agrivoltaic mounting system able to collect, divert, and store rainwater and irrigate cultivated rows of rainfed row crops.
- Windstore (Tel Mond, Israel) and NPS Solutions (Darien, CT) to develop a compressed air energy storage solution incorporating wind turbine towers.
“We celebrate the 15th year milestone of this pivotal program, a testament to the collaborative efforts of our U.S. and Israeli stakeholders fostering groundbreaking Clean Energy technologies,” said Jaron Lotan, Executive Director, BIRD Foundation. “This unique platform has played a significant role in advancing the energy ecosystems, particularly in enhancing collaborations between corporations and research institutions across the U.S. and Israel. I am proud to have been able to approve this great group of projects in these challenging times when strengthening technology cooperation between the U.S. and Israel is more important than ever.”
BIRD Energy was launched in 2009 under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 to foster collaborative research and development projects between the United States and Israel. At its last board meeting, the BIRD Foundation approved investments in binational projects for $9.6 million. The deadline for submitting executive summaries for the BIRD Foundation's next round of approvals is March 7 and a final decision will be made by June.
