After REAP’s success in establishing the REF to support commercial renewable energy technologies in 2008, the organization partnered with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP), the Denali Commission and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to design a state program that would support the application of new technologies in Alaska that were not yet commercially viable.

In 2010, the Emerging Energy Technology Fund (EETF) was established by the Alaska legislature. For over a decade, the EETF made grants to support emerging technologies that had the potential to be commercialized in Alaska within five years. Those technologies have included energy storage, heat pumps and hydrokinetic resources. An EETF grant helped lead to the first commercial in-river hydrokinetic project ever installed in the United States in 2019 in the village of Igiugig, near the mouth of the Kvichak River on Lake Iliamna.