The funding will be used to work on research projects for energy production, storage and use under the second round of the Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) program.
The projects were selected from over 200 proposals and 10 were new while the other 22 received renewed funding.
Each research center has received between $2m and $4m per year for up to four fiscal years and the EFRC program application will be available every two years.
The DOE said research projects include advances in solar energy, electrical energy storage, carbon capture and sequestration, materials and chemistry by design, biosciences and extreme environments.
US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the funding will help fuel scientific and technological innovation.
"Today, we are mobilizing some of our most talented scientists to join forces and pursue the discoveries and breakthroughs that will lay the foundation for our nation’s energy future," Moniz added.
The EFRC program intends to speed up transformative discovery, combining the talents and creativity of the national scientific workforce with new generation of tools for penetrating, understanding, and manipulating matter on the atomic and molecular scales.
The DOE established 46 centers in August 2009 involving universities, national laboratories, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit firms, singly or in partnerships, and funded them with $2m to $5m per year for a five-year initial award period.
Image: US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. Photo: Courtesy of the US Department of Energy.
