WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 22, 2026): The EFI Foundation (EFIF) launched the Energy Innovation Project today, a comprehensive data hub that aggregates federal energy innovation data, generates analysis on trends and performance, and provides recommendations for how the United States can maintain its competitive edge in energy innovation.
The Energy Innovation Project consolidates and tracks key metrics across government reports, federal appropriations, and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-issued awards since fiscal year 2017 to illuminate how federal spending, project selection, and agency staffing impact the pace and scale of U.S. energy innovation.
DOE’s outdated agency structures, billions in recent cuts, and an inability to transparently measure progress have held back U.S. energy innovation. The database provides a detailed, comprehensive, and regularly updated picture of end-to-end innovation, measuring how policy and investments translate into impact, and charting a roadmap for accelerating new breakthroughs.
“This first-of-its-kind resource provides a single integrated view of the U.S. energy innovation system, tracking exactly where federal energy dollars are flowing and how quickly projects are deploying,” said Alex Kizer, the Executive Vice President of EFIF, who leads the project. “The Energy Innovation Project is designed to unlock new insights to aid research and guide policy proposals at the frontier of American energy innovation,” said Kizer. Project analysts have used the data to show that DOE’s science and energy innovation offices have over $80 billion in funding at their disposal, having only spent $1.6 billion last year. Already, this database has been used by congressional offices to understand the state of DOE’s workforce and spending.
“America’s innovation ecosystem is critical to our economic growth, national security, and global leadership,” said Ernest J. Moniz, president and chief executive officer of EFIF. “The Energy Innovation Project is aimed at developing the resources to support public and private efforts for long-lasting American energy leadership.” As the 13th U.S. Energy Secretary, Moniz established Mission Innovation, an international initiative to significantly raise government support for clean energy projects to benefit both the public and private sectors.
“Founders Pledge is proud to support EFIF’s efforts to examine how staffing reductions have strained the government’s ability to manage funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act,” said Johannes Ackva, climate lead of Founders Pledge. “EFIF’s rigorous quantitative analyses of impacts to implementation speed and oversight effectiveness have helped shift the conversation toward building the institutional capacity needed to sustain American energy leadership—a shift that’s clearly reflected in President Trump’s new budget request.”
This publicly available resource allows decision-makers from policy and industry to avoid missing vital information that, while public, is dispersed across hundreds of documents. Explore the database on the EFIF website.
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Media Contact
Lizi Bowen, EFI Foundation, llbowen@efifoundation.org
About the EFI Foundation
The EFI Foundation tackles today’s toughest energy challenges. We are an innovation energy lab driving conversations, testing groundbreaking ideas, and delivering actionable solutions.
About Founders Pledge
Founders Pledge is a community of entrepreneurs and investors committed to finding and funding solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. We empower our members to pledge a portion of their future exit proceeds to charity and provide research, guidance, and access to high-impact giving opportunities through our specialized philanthropic funds, helping them to direct their resources effectively. Our mission is to help entrepreneurs do immense good.
