Alpen High Performance Products announced a combined $18 million funding raise designed to help scale its window, door and glass businesses. The funding is anchored by a $5.9 million grant from the Department of Energy that was awarded as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Recovery Act. The DOE grant catalyzed an additional $12.1 million of private capital.
What Alpen says
"The world is waking up to the critical importance of windows in decarbonizing buildings. Alpen's goal is to scale the advanced window market by manufacturing affordable, ultra-efficient windows and glass right here in the United States," says Alpen CEO Andrew Zech. "The funding is a great example of the power of public-private partnership. For the last five years, Alpen partnered with the DOE's national lab system and the General Services Administration to pioneer and test the use of ultra-thin-glass as a lightweight insulator in windows. Having proven the technology, the DOE grant and matching private capital will accelerate deployment in the market."
How the funding will help
In addition, Alpen's ability to scale its thin-glass window technologies will also help the company create hundreds of new jobs in American communities impacted by coal plant and coal mine closures. According to the White House, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Recovery Act was established to address the "existential threat of the climate crisis and set forth a new era of American innovation and ingenuity to lower consumer costs and drive the global clean energy economy forward."
"We believe Alpen can serve as a success story for that mission," says Zech. "Our thin-glass units help the entire industry by providing manufacturers with high-performance, energy-efficient thin glass without requiring any changes to their existing designs. We want to keep America at the vanguard of advanced building science, and we want to make advanced windows affordable for all."
