Energy Research

The United States Department of Energy has marked an engineering research project at West Virginia University as a high potential opportunity to make a demonstrable impact on the country’s energy portfolio and to do it quickly. The University has received $1.25 million from DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, known as ARPA-E. The award will be used to develop technologies for converting electrical energy from renewable resources into energy-dense carbon-neutral liquid fuels – that is, fuels that do not increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

West Virginia University has joined a national effort to turn natural gas into valuable products and do it at the well. This serves a real-world need for many production locations in the Marcellus Shale, especially those in West Virginia, where some shale gas resources are stranded without pipeline infrastructure, which affects access and price.

The National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium, a program of West Virginia University, has joined forces with the world’s largest Earth Day initiative, Earth Day Texas, to conduct the 2017 Kickoff Event for National Alternative Fuel Vehicle Day Odyssey. Earth Day Texas will host the kickoff as part of an inaugural one-day alternative fuel vehicle summit, coordinated by the NAFTC.

West Virginia University is aggressively developing proposals with other institutions to lead or participate in the POWER - Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce Revitalization - initiative of the U.S. Economic Development Administration with the Appalachian Regional Commission.