U.S. DOE Offers $70M for Smart Manufacturing Institute
Energy Efficiency Markets, September 22, 2015. Image credit: TBIT
The U.S. Department of Energy is offering up to $70 million in funding for a new institute that will focus on smart manufacturing research and development.
“Smart manufacturing is a key information technology approach to unlocking energy efficiency in manufacturing,” said Ernest Moniz, DOE secretary. “These technologies will make industries from oil and gas to aerospace and food production more competitive with intelligent communications systems, real-time energy savings and increased energy productivity. Energy intensive industries, such as steelmaking, could see a 10 to 20 percent reduction in the cost of production, making products such as solar panels and chemical materials, such as plastics, as well as the cars and other products they go into, more affordable for American consumers.”
The manufacturing sector, a subset of the industrial sector, consumes 24 quads of primary energy annually in the United States—about 79 percent of total industrial energy use, according to the DOE. Industry experts estimate that investments in smart manufacturing could generate cost savings and new revenues that add up to $10-15 trillion to global gross domestic product over the next 20 year.