Energy-Focused Proposals Mid-FY24 Report

Achieving sustainable, affordable and secure energy for all is a societal imperative. For the last two fiscal years, the Institute for Resilient Environmental and Energy Systems has been tracking the University of Oklahoma’s progress toward this goal, in part by reviewing recent research proposal activity. When an OU researcher submits a proposal to an external funding source, they must first complete the OU proposal submission form. Within this form, the principal investigator is asked to designate whether their proposal effort is thematically related to one or more of the strategic research verticals, including the Energy, Environment and Sustainability vertical. This report represents an analysis of the EES-designated proposals.

Based on data reported by OU’s Office of Research Services for the period July 1, 2023-January 31, 2024, the University of Oklahoma’s energy-related research portfolio reflects an all-of-the-above approach, maintaining its traditional strengths while growing the research enterprise in low-carbon, sustainable energy production. In the first half of fiscal year 2024, OU researchers submitted 59 energy-related proposals, requesting over $29 million in funding from external sources (e.g., federal agencies, industry, and not-for-profits). The proposed projects ranged from basic energy sciences emphasizing theoretical and experimental approaches to fully convergent, transdisciplinary energy research incorporating physical, political and social sciences in co-production with partners in industry, national laboratories and native nations to address equitable and clean energy challenges in the U.S.

Breaking down the research into distinct categories of emphasis can be subjective given that topics are often crosscutting, addressing multiple energy-related challenges between areas like biomass and plastic upcycling, hydrogen production, and carbon capture and storage. With that in mind, in FY24, the top three categories of funding requests were energy efficiency at 10%, hydrogen and ammonia at 9.5%, and biofuels and waste upcycling at 6%. Research related to petroleum engineering, fusion, critical materials, and carbon monitoring of the energy sector were all roughly 3.5% of the proposal requests. Solar and societal-related energy research were roughly 2.5 % of funding requests. Renewable energy measured as an “umbrella” category, including wind, solar, biofuels, and geothermal, represented nearly 11% of total requested funding.

Comparing FY24 and FY23 proposal activity highlights some notable differences as well as the continuation of recent research trends. The mean 6-month funding request rate dropped from roughly $78 million in FY23 to $29 million for the first half of FY24. In FY23, the U.S. Department of Energy supported opportunities for large-scale, multi-institutional, technology demonstration programs in hydrogen and carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), that dominated OU efforts in those categories. These funding opportunities were not available in the first half of FY24 but will be reflected in the full FY24 accounting. Nonetheless, hydrogen-related research proposals, a minor component of the OU energy research portfolio before FY23, continue to be one of the top drivers of funding requests. Of note, fusion-related proposal activity, largely absent before FY23, continues to grow both in the number of proposals submitted and funding requested. The proportional effort of renewable energy-related proposals remained similar in FY23 and FY24, at approximately 12% of total proposal funding requests.

These proposed projects reflect the overarching commitment of our faculty to impactful, solutions-focused research. The OU community of researchers and scholars continues to make important discoveries at the frontiers of fundamental science. At the same time, we are increasingly organizing research collaborations around complex societal problems —energy, food, water, transportation, health, security, environmental quality and so on. These problems are made even more challenging in the context of climate change and rapidly expanding urban systems. With a growing focus on transdisciplinary teams working together in novel ways, OU is well-positioned to address many of these challenges and drive innovation toward a more sustainable, affordable and secure energy future.