The U.S. Department of Energy is providing $256 million in Recovery Act funds to support projects to curb consumption in energy intensive manufacturing and IT industries.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced Monday that the grants would be made available for projects in three key areas that affect major U.S. industrial sectors:

• $156 million in grants for deployment or demonstration projects involving combined heat and power (cogeneration) systems, district energy systems, waste energy recovery systems or efficient industrial equipment.

Emphasis in this area, which is to receive the lion's share of funding, will be on near-term solutions and technology for industrial and residential settings. Combined heat and power and district energy systems can attain efficiencies of 80 percent or more compared to about 45 percent for conventional heat and power production, the DOE noted in its announcement. It also said waste recovery systems can save 17 gigawatts of energy annually nationwide.

• $50 million in grants for energy efficiency research, deployment and demonstration projects for the information and communication technology industries.

• $50 million in grants for research, deployment and demonstration projects involving a range of advanced industrial materials that can be applied in fuel flexibility programs, cogeneration technologies, energy intensive processes and nanomanufacturing.

A detailed list of the DOE's allocations to date of Recovery Act funds is available at http://www.energy.gov/recovery/.

_{A Combined Heat and Power System — Photo by Bernard Blessinger, Courtesy of NREL}