Three venture capital firms have been selected to be part of a federal program that promises to develop alternative energy technology, the U.S. Department of Energy said on Wednesday. The Entrepreneur and Residence program will link each of the three firms with national laboratories in order to make a progress in the environmentally-friendly technologies.

“The Entrepreneur in Residence pilot program provides venture capital-sponsored entrepreneurs with access into three Energy Department’s world-class national labs to accelerate adoption of advanced renewable energy and energy efficient technologies to fundamentally transform how we power this nation,” DOE Assistant Secretary Karsner said in a statement.

EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence)is a program supported by President Bush and involves the following collaborations: Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (Menlo Park, CA) will work with DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory; ARCH Venture Partners (Chicago, IL) will work with DOE’s Sandia National Laboratory; and Foundation Capital (Menlo Park, CA) will work with DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The U.S. Department of Energy will grant $100,000 for each of the three entrepreneurs for necessary expenses, but the firms are expected to contribute with funds of their own if that should be the case. Their mission will be to evaluate the technologies and the market opportunities, as well as propose business alternatives for the future, in a common effort to cut down greenhouse gas emissions and bring the latest environmentally-friendly technologies to front.

All three entrepreneurs have shown great interest in cutting-edge technology, and such a collaboration could have nothing but a positive outcome for both environmental and economic reasons. The laboratories and the venture capital firms have declared themselves to be prepared for innovation at a fast pace, and turn the collaboration into a lucrative experiment. What they might uncover today, could lead the market in the future, and this is one change none of them want to miss.