Governments around the world have been establishing big climate goals. Here in the United States, the Biden administration set a target to build a 100% carbon-free electricity sector by 2035 and a net-zero-emissions economy by 2050, charting a path to a future in which every industry from manufacturing to energy and even transportation achieves a balance between carbon emitted and absorbed.
In reflecting on 2022 and looking ahead to 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) is sharing a few of the many successes its experts, labs, and partners achieved in the last year to help reach those ambitious goals. Together with the many other massive efforts underway across DOE, these successes, projects, and people will help build that clean energy future.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Water Power Technologies Office looks back at 2022 and ahead to 2023. Video by the U.S. Department of Energy
January
WPTO awarded $25 million for marine energy projects that will support increased research, development, and demonstration of wave energy technologies and represent the first round of open-water testing at the PacWave South test site off the Oregon coast.
February
WPTO experts, as part of a larger DOE team, contributed to a report on how to broaden access to DOE funding opportunities and increase the diversity of innovators and entrepreneurs developing clean energy technologies.
A DOE report on the U.S. hydropower supply chain found that while the existing domestic supply chain is mature and effectively supports the nation's large hydropower fleet, anticipated new construction and the need to complete refurbishments, upgrades, and relicensing activities point to the need to scale up domestic supply chain activities.
A 2022 DOE report found that the U.S. hydropower supply chain may need to scale up to support new hydropower construction as well as refurbishments, upgrades, and relicensing activities. Image from Karl Specht, U.S. Department of Energy's Make a Splash photo contest
March
WPTO released its first Multi-Year Program Plan, which outlines the office's research priorities and plans through 2025.
For Women's History Month, WPTO celebrated five women in water power, who discussed their varying paths to working in water power and how they're helping to move the nation closer to its clean energy goals.
April
WPTO sought input from the nonfederal hydropower community on data and research needs to help the office explore how to leverage state-of-the-art climate change science to inform long-term hydropower operation and resource planning.
Oneka Technologies and its wave-powered desalination device, Oneka Snowflake, won the $500,000 grand prize in the Waves to Water Prize, which challenged competitors to design, build, and test devices that use wave energy to produce clean drinking water from ocean water.
Members of the Oneka Technologies team, who competed in and won the grand prize of the Waves to Water Prize, stand with their award-winning device. Photo from Werner Slocum, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
WPTO launched the Hydropower Operations Optimization (H2Os) Prize, in which competitors use modeling, data analytics, and machine learning to create new ways for hydropower systems to coordinate with existing grid scheduling practices and meet water management needs, such as water supply, environmental flow requirements, and flood management.
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