The Shell GameChanger Accelerator™ Powered by NREL (GCxN) has selected five startups to participate in its seventh cohort. Aligned with Shell’s Powering Progress strategy and NREL’s mission to deliver integrated solutions for an affordable, secure energy future, this year’s cohort features companies innovating across two strategic areas: future feedstocks and electrochemical pathways to fuels.
History was made this year at NREL’s Industry Growth Forum (IGF), and not only because it celebrated the 30th anniversary of the event. The IGF also reached a record high number for attendance: more than 1,000 people Held March 26–28, 2025, the event featured several new opportunities for investors, startups, and other industry professionals.
Imagine a severe storm knocks out a neighborhood powerline; while most homes go dark, one homeowner seamlessly manages their backup energy, prioritizing critical appliances. This is not the future—it is happening now with SPAN’s smart electrical panel. SPAN’s panel goes beyond traditional capabilities, allowing users to control individual circuits for individual devices.
The Shell GameChanger Accelerator Powered by NREL (GCxN) selected Cleantech Open and BRITE Energy Innovators as recipients of its inaugural Channel Partner Strategic Awards. This year’s awards prioritize ecosystem building in communities and tailored support for energy entrepreneurs by fostering partnerships between Channel Partners and community organizations and incubators in underserved markets.
On Oct. 15, 2024, the NREL Innovation Showcase brought together entrepreneurs, industry experts, investors, and NREL researchers around the theme “Demand Matters.” As a leading force in bridging emerging technologies with market opportunities, the IEC plays a critical role in connecting innovators with investors and industry stakeholders to drive solutions forward.
Using enzymes instead of microbes allows Invizyne to focus on the specific enzyme pathways that make the biofuels, instead of trying to control the thousands of other things cells do. This means that Invizyne is in engineering-level control of optimizing the enzymes derived from biology, which are renewable and green, to replace petroleum-derived materials.
DTE Materials’ patented process, Clearwash, is designed to make anatomical changes to biomass to make it integrate with ceramic binders more effectively. With NREL equipment, Dan Schell is performing steam explosions repeatedly to test DTE’s feedstock. They will run the equipment over an eight-hour day, followed by a second round of testing two weeks later.
Biotech entrepreneur and Hexas Biomass founder and CEO Wendy Owens has brought her groundbreaking (pun intended) crop to GCxN after admiring the program from afar for several years. Hexas produces a plant-based raw material, called XanoFiber, that can substitute as feedstock instead of wood, food crops for fuel, and fossil-fuel-based raw materials.
NREL and its corporate program partners often help startups at their earliest stages so they can start the journey to bring disruptive technologies into the market. It usually occurs earlier in a startup’s development when NREL can validate emerging technologies with its experts and equipment that startups cannot afford or access otherwise.
This fall, Shell and NREL agreed to extend the GCxN program for another five years, providing 30 more startups with access to nondilutive funding to conduct technical assistance projects. Cohort 6 moves GCxN into technical areas it has not explored before, piecing together different expertise from across the laboratory in ways that are industry relevant.
