Alliance to Continue Management of NREL

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will extend the contract for management of its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.

In a letter to the Alliance, DOE said it was providing preliminary notice that the department will exercise the option to extend Alliance’s contract to manage and operate NREL beyond the current five-year contract period. The department did not specify the extension period in its notice to the Alliance.

Alliance is a limited liability company that is equally owned and governed by Battelle and MRIGlobal. It was awarded the contract to manage and operate the laboratory on July 29, 2008. The original contract period was from Oct. 1, 2008, through Sept. 30, 2013. It was valued at $1.1 billion over the five years, and could be extended up to an additional five years.

Dr. Dan Arvizu serves as Alliance president and director of NREL. He has led NREL for seven years.

“This announcement is a positive indication of the value Alliance brings to DOE in the management of NREL,” Dr. Arvizu said.

The Alliance leadership team is comprised of Dr. Dana Christensen, deputy laboratory director for science and technology; Ken Powers, deputy laboratory director and chief operating officer; and Bobi Garrett, deputy laboratory director for strategic planning and partnerships.

Under the Alliance’s leadership, NREL has grown from about 1,000 employees to about 2,300 and has built a campus that is a living model for architects and builders on what is possible in energy-efficient laboratories and office parks. The lab’s newest buildings – the Integrated Biorefinery Research Facility and the Energy Systems Integration Facility – will continue NREL’s tradition of offering one-of-a-kind capacities for industry partners.

NREL has earned 12 R&D 100 Awards since 2008, for innovations from a utility-scale solar power generator to a revolutionary new kind of air conditioning.

NREL’s annual submissions of inventions have increased 276% and patent application filings have risen by 192% in the last five years. This focus on intellectual property commercialization has resulted in doubling the number of NREL commercial intellectual property licenses. The lab currently holds 262 patents.

With 260 active technology partnership agreements, Alliance has made it a priority to work with industry partners to increase the speed and scale of technology deployment. In 2011, NREL had more cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) activity than any other DOE labora­tory and was respon­sible for one-quarter of all CRADAs in the DOE system.

The Alliance is governed by a 15-member Board of Directors composed of five executives each from MRIGlobal and Battelle, as well as representatives from five key collaborating universities: Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University, University of Colorado-Boulder, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development.