Comprehensive List

With ideas that are so new, fundamental discovery is often the first step needed in research. As part of its strategy to build a diverse portfolio of innovative technologies, GCEP provides up to $100,000 in funding for research activities of an exploratory nature that test the feasibility and application of potential step-out ideas. During a one-year performance period, these activities focus on novel approaches and innovative concepts associated with technologies that lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale. To date, GCEP has funded 35 exploratory efforts. Based on initial results, close to a third of these have successfully gone on to be funded as three-year GCEP research programs, including some that set out to develop new transparent electrodes for photovoltaics, produce hydrogen from glucose in a cell-free manner and integrate coal energy conversion with aquifer-based carbon sequestration.

In 2014, GCEP awarded four exploratory research grants to Stanford faculty for promising proposals in the areas of transportation, energy storage, artificial photosynthesis and advanced combustion.

• 2014
  • Enhancing Hydride Thermodynamics Through Nanostructuring
  • New Pathways Towards High Performance Transparent Conductive Oxides
  • Gas Molecules as the Next-Generation Thermoelectric: Extracting Electricity from Hot Gas with No Moving Parts
• 2013
  
  • High-Efficiency Engines
  • Safe Wireless Power Transfer to Moving Vehicles
  • Solar Water-Splitting Catalysis
  • Ultra-Fast Rechargeable Nickel/Zinc Batteries
• 2012
  • Wireless Power Transfer to Moving Vehicles
  • Continuous Passive-Seismic Monitoring of CO₂ Geologic Sequestration Projects
  • Electrochemical Dinitrogen Fixation
  • Real-Time Monitoring at CO₂ Sequestration Sites: Fast Data Assimilation and Risk Evaluation
  • Solid-state Photon Enhanced Thermionic Emission for Solar Energy Conversion
  • CO₂ Capture Using Carbon-based Sorbents
• 2011
  
  • Next Generation High-Efficiency Low-Cost Thin Film Photovoltaics
  • Axially Graded Index Lens (AGILE) as a Non-tracking Solar Concentrator
  • Efficient Cell-Free Hydrogen Production from Glucose: Extension
  • Manufacturable Nanostructured Solar Cells with Efficient Light Trapping and Charge Carrier Collection
  • Towards Architecturally Engineered, Ultra-High Performance Solid Oxide Fuel Cells by Scalable Manufacturing Methods
• 2010
  
  • Carbon-ion Conducting Thin Film Membranes Towards Efficient CO₂ Separation
  • Efficient Cell-Free Hydrogen Production from Glucose
  • Fundamental Studies of Plasma Air Separation
  • Geological Sequestration of CO₂ – An Exploratory Study of the Mechanisms and Kinetics of CO₂ Reaction with Mg-Silicates
  • High Capacity Molecular Hydrogen Storage in Novel Crystalline Solids
  • Multijunction Nanowire Solar Cells for Inexpensive and Highly Efficient Photoelectricity: Enabling Methods
• 2009
  
  • Development of an Immobilized Enzyme System for Lignocellulosic Biomass Saccharification
  • Electrocatalytic Water Oxidation to Dioxygen in Molecular PdII/IV Coordination Environment
  • Nanostructured MoS2 and WS2 for the Solar Production of Hydrogen
  • Spectroscopic Characterization of Multi-Exciton Generation Efficiency in Nano-Structured Materials
• 2008
  
  • Increasing Carbon Storage Within Soils by Controlling Key Microbial Respiration Processes
• 2007
  
  • Feasibility of a Novel Photoelectrochemical Conversion Device
  • High Voltage Alloys for Lithium Battery Cathodes
  • Nanostructured ZnO as a Solution-Processable Transparent Electrode Material for Low-Cost Photovoltaics
  • Nanowire-Nanocrystal Multiexciton Solar Cells
  • Plasma Activated Fuel Cells
• 2006
  
  • Advanced Thermionic Energy Converters
  • Integration of Coal Energy Conversion with Aquifer-Based Carbon Sequestration (Brigham Young University)
  • Integration of Coal Energy Conversion with Aquifer-Based Carbon Sequestration (Stanford University)
  • Nanotube Networks as Transparent Electrodes for Solar Cells