ARPA-E faces a tricky mandate—invest in risky technologies that no one else wants to fund, while still showing results.
The U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, which began its fifth annual summit today in Washington, D.C., is meant to kick-start early-stage technologies that could transform the energy industry, replacing fossil fuels and reducing dependence on foreign energy sources. But five years after ARPA-E was first funded, is it living up to the objectives (see “What ARPA-E Can’t Do” and “What ARPA-E Does Well: Making Connections”)?
Some experts say that political pressures are making it difficult for the agency to support the risky technologies it was created to fund. ARPA-E has had bipartisan support, but it has always struggled to get funding. Last year, the House voted to give the agency just 20 percent of what it had asked for in its budget request. As it turned out, the agency got much more than that: the omnibus spending bill that passed earlier this year set aside $275 million for the agency, about 75 percent of the budget request.More tomorrow.
Part of the agency’s challenge is that it’s feeling pressure from two sides. On the one hand, it needs to show results to justify continued funding. That’s led it to fund some projects that have a higher chance of paying off, and to taking “fewer risks than they should have,” says David Victor, director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California at San Diego. But playing it safe can also bring criticism from Congress. The chief complaint from a 2012 House hearing on ARPA-E was that it was funding some projects that could have been funded by companies instead of the government.
It’s a tricky balance. “If everything worked right away, I wouldn’t be taking big enough swings,” says Cheryl Martin, ARPA-E’s acting director. But, as she tells members of Congress, “if nothing ever worked, you should stop funding us.”...Continue
