University Consortium to Provide Services to Department of Energy NETL Lab

Three industry-led teams that include the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and three other major research universities have been awarded contracts to provide a range of research and engineering services to the National Energy Technology Lab (NETL). The collective value of the three contracts is expected to exceed $465 million over a five-year period.

NETL, part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratory system, conducts research in coal, natural gas, and oil technologies and analyzes energy systems and international energy issues for the DOE Office of Fossil Energy. It also performs contract and project management for a number of other DOE offices.

The consortium of universities, comprising Carnegie Mellon, Pitt, West Virginia, Penn State, and Virginia Tech, joined a major industrial firm to pursue each of the three competitive awards. URS Corporation, headquartered in San Francisco, is the prime contractor on a program to provide fossil energy research and engineering services. McLean, Va.-based Booz Allen Hamilton will manage work on energy sector planning and analysis, and KeyLogic Systems of Morgantown, W.Va., is the prime contractor for project execution and integration.

“The University of Pittsburgh’s burgeoning activities in energy-related research will be greatly enhanced by this collaborative effort with our partner universities and NETL,” said Brian Gleeson, director of Pitt’s Center for Energy and the Harry S. Tack Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering. “Pitt has more than 100 researchers who have been engaged in research with NETL over the past five years, and this award will allow for the continuance of world-class research in a wide spectrum of energy topics.”

Andy Gellman, consortium research director and head of Carnegie Mellon’s chemical engineering department, said he is “looking forward to leading a very talented, multi-disciplinary team as we work to support the DOE’s premier fossil energy and development laboratory.”

Over the past four years, three of the five participating universities have collectively performed more than $40 million in research projects under the previous support services contract.