ARPA-E drives investment in high-risk technology research

Yesterday, July 7, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) hosted a congressional briefing on Capitol Hill entitled “APRA-E and the Energy Technology Revolution” where its director, Dr. Arun Majumdar, spoke on the successes of ARPA-E and its goals for the next decade. ASME and IEEE-USA graciously hosted the event.

ARPA-E is the Advanced Research Projects Agency- Energy and is part of the Department of Energy. It is the nation’s “only agency devoted to transformational energy research and development”. It was launched by President Obama on April 27, 2009 as part of the America COMPETES Act and received official budget funding in FY2011 in the amount of $180 million. Through a competitive bidding and reviewing process, ARPA-E awards grants to researchers of energy technology and tends to invest in high-risk technologies that are not guaranteed success.

Dr. Majumdar discussed some of the successful technologies ARPA-E has funded in the last two years. These ranged from more efficient ways to produce biofuels to transportation batteries that have twice the energy density of current batteries, from new manufacturing techniques for photovoltaic cells to more efficient drilling through the use of drill bits with lasers.

Dr. Majumdar briefly touched on the fact that ARPA-E is oversubscribed with grant applications. He believes that US “capacity to innovate is amazing.” He said that he had no idea just how creative Americans were until he started as ARPA-E’s first director and he regrets not being able to fund all of the great project ideas that cross his desk.

He also applauded the organizational structure of ARPA-E as written into its charter, which currently only allows its employees to work for 3-4 years before moving on. This means that efficiency and success are of the utmost importance and has allowed for so much progress in such a short time. All ARPA-E employees are outcome driven and thus very motivated. Currently, contracting time is only two months, which is an impressive time-frame for any organization. Majumdar said that ARPA-E has very successfully leveraged federal dollars because in two years because it has invested around $360 million in new technologies and was extremely proud to reveal that, to date, the private sector has almost matched that investment, even investing in very risky technology that may not work.

Dr. Majumdar finished his presentation by saying that he believes that the next 10-20 years are crucial for American growth and that the best way to get out of the financial hole that we are in today is to innovate. He said that the US can pull ahead of the pack and return to a stronger position of economic and technological prominence within the international community through investment in and export of energy technology. ARPA-E’s role in this is to continue to pick promising projects to invest in, and that is what he intends to do with his last year on the job.