This FOA marks the fifth OPEN solicitation in the history of ARPA-E. The previous OPEN solicitations were conducted at the inception of the agency in 2009 and again in 2012, 2015, and 2018. OPEN 2021 therefore continues the three-year periodic cycle for ARPA-E OPEN solicitations. An OPEN solicitation provides a vitally important mechanism for the support of innovative energy R&D that complements ARPA-E’s primary mechanism, which is through the solicitation of research projects in focused technology programs.
ARPA-E’s focused programs target specific areas of technology that the agency has identified, through extensive interaction with the appropriate external stakeholders, as having significant potential impact on one or more of the Mission Areas described in Section I.A of the FOA. Awards made in response to the solicitation for focused programs support the aggressive technical targets established in that solicitation. Taken in total, ARPA-E’s focused technology programs cover a significant portion of the spectrum of energy technologies and applications.
ARPA-E’s OPEN FOAs ensure that the agency does not miss opportunities to support innovative energy R&D that falls outside of the topics of the focused technology programs or that develop after focused solicitations have closed. OPEN FOAs provide the agency with a broad sampling of new and emerging opportunities across the complete spectrum of energy applications and allow the agency to “take the pulse” of the energy R&D community. OPEN FOAs have been and will continue to be the complement to the agency’s focused technology programs – a unique combination of approaches for supporting the most innovative and current energy technology R&D. For instance, one-third of the sixty examples of most successful ARPA-E projects featured in ARPA-E Impact volumes (https://arpa-e.energy.gov/about/our-impact) resulted from OPEN solicitations. Potential applicants to this FOA are strongly encouraged to examine the OPEN projects in these volumes and all of the projects supported in the previous four OPEN solicitations (https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/open-programs) for examples of the creative and innovative R&D ARPA-E seeks in its OPEN solicitations.