International Team

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's (EERE's) International Team advances the progress of EERE's domestic programs and accelerates global deployment of U.S. clean energy products and services through international collaboration.

To realize the benefits of international collaboration, we coordinate with other offices in the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. government agencies to identify, negotiate and actively manage targeted partnerships and projects that help advance our strategic goals. The collaborative research we support is either in the "pre-competitive" space or includes intellectual property issues that have been agreed upon in advance. All funds support U.S.-based project performers or international organizations of which the United States is a member.

Why it Matters

We support collaborative activities with international partners to help:

• Accelerate our domestic R&D results by leveraging international resources
  • We leverage 3:1 U.S. funds with the Israeli government and private sector funds in supporting collaborative R&D on multiple energy efficiency and renewable energy topics through the United States – Israel BIRD Foundation.
  • We coordinate competitively-awarded collaborative R&D consortia of American scientists with counterparts in China and India.
  • We facilitate information exchange and expert-to-expert interactions between American scientists and their counterparts around the world.
• Improve energy security
  • We fund collaborative R&D on developing drop-in biofuels with Brazil, which can lead to reduced oil demand in both countries.
  • Our collaborative projects with countries such as Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and Russia are focused on enhancing their readiness to absorb energy efficiency and/or renewable energy.
• Prime markets for U.S. exports
  • We have supported a technical workshop in Brazil involving 3 U.S.-based mid-size wind turbine manufacturers to explore Brazilian policy incentives, interconnection issues, and market opportunities.
  • We support experts at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to collaborate with India's Solar Energy Center (SEC) on testing and characterization of U.S.-manufactured solar photovoltaic (PV) modules at SEC's outdoor test facility. This activity supports the American PV thin film industry by improving understanding how products perform in different environments over time and by developing testing procedures to improve product reliability.
  • We support technical experts in adopting U.S. test procedures and energy efficiency labeling schemes for building products. Adopting these labels in foreign markets can reduce compliance costs to American manufacturers seeking to sell into these markets.

Our technical collaborations are wide ranging, from coordinated research and development to renewable resource assessment, standards and labeling, code development, product testing and certification, policy analysis, and more. But one thing all our activities have in common is delivering benefits to the U.S. taxpayer.