2026 Strategic Energy Seed Grant Call for Proposals

Sponsor: Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin Agency: Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin Kind: grant Deadline: 2026-03-02 Start Date: 2025-12-11 Budget: $100,000

Program Description

The 2026 Strategic Energy Seed Grant Program is a funding opportunity sponsored by the Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin to spark new, impactful and collaborative research in any field of energy, including business, law and policy.

Discipline/Subject Area

Energy Sciences, Engineering, Business, Law and/or Policy

Number of Awards

15

Maximum Total Funding Per Project

$100,000

Project Dates

May 1, 2026 – August 31, 2027

Deadline for Proposal Submissions

March 2, 2026 (11:59 p.m.)

Synopsis of Program

The 2026 Strategic Energy Seed Grant Program aims to accelerate scientific, engineering, technological, techno-economic and policy innovation. This opportunity is open to all fields of energy research. Proposals addressing the energy and water resource demands of data/computing/AI centers, re-use of produced water, critical minerals, government policy frameworks needed to speed the pace of energy innovation, and the following four topical areas are of particular relevance:

Carbon Management or CCUS (Utilization Via All Pathways Including Biological)

A future with net zero carbon emissions will require technology and policy advances in carbon capture (including point source and direct air capture (DAC) and marine carbon capture), carbon storage, and carbon utilization (i.e., the conversion of CO2 to useful products. These approaches might include the development of new catalysts, tools of synthetic biology and nature-based solutions, among others. The generation of clean hydrogen from natural gas requires effective carbon capture, storage and utilization strategies. Research addressing technoeconomic hurdles and opportunities, and government policy frameworks that could promote/hinder development or build-out are of particular interest.

Low and Zero-Carbon Fuels and Distributed Energy Resources (DERs)

Renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biofuels and geothermal will provide critical resources for generating low-carbon electricity and low- to no-carbon fuels. Long-duration, daily-to-monthly, energy storage technologies will be required to manage the intermittency of solar and wind. Clean hydrogen can be generated and used or converted to NH3, methanol or formate for example, for transport and later use in a wide range of chemicals, biofuels and biological and materials processes. There is a potential to utilize geothermal electricity generation to power AI/data centers and emerging opportunities to use electricity to generate chemicals—so-called, power-to-X (P2X) processes—with the potential to dramatically reduce GHG emissions. Plastics production and use must be made more sustainable. The widespread emergence of electric vehicles (i.e., e-mobility) and the potential for bidirectional charging—so-called vehicle-to-home (V2H), vehicle-to-grid (V2G) or vehicle-to-anything (V2X)—are providing new opportunities for reducing carbon emissions and improving our energy resiliency. In addition to the numerous technology hurdles, the appropriate mix of these many options will vary by region and country and be determined by policy-enabled markets (for early adoption), which need to be understood. Seed ideas for hard-to-abate challenges (such as long-distance transportation, including shipping and aviation (sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs)) among others) are especially encouraged.

Industrial (Chemical/Thermal [Heat]) Decarbonization

Industrial processes account for about 30% of all global GHG emissions, and these emissions are rising much more rapidly than emissions in the power, transportation and buildings sectors. About 45% of industrial GHG emissions arise from manufacturing steel, cement, ammonia and ethylene, which come from the feedstocks and raw materials (45%), high-temperature heat generation (35%) and additional fuels burned to generate low- and medium-heat (20%). Electrification of industrial processes provides a route to decarbonization, lower manufacturing cost and improved energy efficiency, but faces significant technological challenges. Carbon emissions are inherent to the chemical processes currently used to make these materials, because not only are there significant carbon emissions associated with the energy produced to drive the manufacturing, but CO2 is also emitted as a byproduct of the reactions used to make these materials and chemical products. Alternative materials, chemistry, feedstocks and process paths are needed. New process intensification strategies are required to enable substantially smaller, cleaner, and more energy efficient technologies. Strategies are needed to dramatically lower the embodied energy in buildings and building materials. There are opportunities to minimize and eliminate wastes using advanced manufacturing strategies, such as additive manufacturing (3D printing), circular economy (for plastics, water, critical materials, etc.) and waste-to-X opportunities, where X can be H2, power, etc. New technologies and strategies are needed to significantly reduce the energy and water demands of AI/data centers related to cooling and thermal management.

Power Value Chain Decarbonization

This sector has one of the highest potentials for lowering carbon footprint, especially through higher integration of renewables in the grid. Opportunities exist with grid expansion/efficiency, CCUS enablement in existing infrastructure, and distributed energy resources integration without/with energy storage and hybrids including smart grid/home/vehicle inter-connects for more-than-one-way power transmission/distribution. Innovative battery concepts are needed that increase the energy storage density, such as solid-state lithium-ion batteries, batteries that go beyond lithium ion, such as sodium or potassium ion batteries, or batteries that can address dual purposes, such as Al/CO2 flow batteries that can accomplish direct air capture of CO2 while storing power.

Energy Infrastructure

Decarbonization efforts across all of the four topical areas will require significant changes to energy infrastructure. Construction and maintenance of this infrastructure could be accelerated by improved use of technology in planning, building, monitoring, and maintaining large projects in remote locations including offshore. Automated technologies that reduce the environmental impact of construction, remove workers from potentially hazardous activities, or minimize resource needs can enable projects that might otherwise be uneconomic. Subjects of particular interest include autonomous construction systems, additive manufacturing of structures, self-assembling structures, modularization, remote monitoring, augmented and/or virtual reality for remote operations and the effect of standardization on permitting and public support for large scale projects. Proposals in any of the four areas that address this infrastructure component are particularly welcome.

Eligibility

1. Applicants must be full-time employees of UT Austin with current PI status.
2. Open to all Colleges or Schools at UT Austin.
3. Proposals must be submitted by collaborative teams of 2 or 3 investigators.
4. One individual must be selected as the project PI.
5. An individual may participate as PI on no more than one proposal. An individual may participate as co-PI on up to four proposals.

Timeline