
ARPA-E
Date: Saturday, March 11, 2006 @ 20:37:29 UTC Topic: Legal
ARPA-E budget should not come from Office of Science, House Science Committee warned
Witnesses have told the House Science Committee that they are open to the idea of creating a new energy research agency at the Department of Energy, but cautioned that funding for the agency must not come from the budget increases proposed for the DoE’s Office of Science. The idea of an Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, modeled on the Department of Defense’s popular Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, was suggested last fall in the National Academies report Rising Above the Gathering Storm. The report recommended an initial investment of $300 million in the agency, rising to $1 billion annually.
“In funding ARPA-E, it is critical that its funding not jeopardize the
basic research supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of
Science.” said Steven Chu, Director of Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory and one of the authors of the report.
Melanie
Kenderdine, vice president of the Gas Technology Institute and a former
DoE official suggested that, instead, Congress could fund ARPA-E with a
one cent per gallon gasoline tax, an idea that a recent poll found a
majority of Americans would support.
The witnesses also warned
that an ARPA-E would face different challenges than DARPA because the
government would not be the primary customer for technologies developed
by the agency, as is the case with DARPA. Instead, the customers for
ARPA-E technology would range from individual consumers to large
utility companies.
Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert,
R-NY, called himself an “open-minded skeptic” about the ARPA-E idea. “I
see that the ARPA-E proposal is predicated on several implicit
assumptions, all of which are, open to debate: One, that the problem
with the energy market is that the supply of new technologies is
insufficient; two, that the supply is constrained because of a lack of
fundamental research; three, that a sensible way to promote more
fundamental research is to apply the DARPA model to the civilian energy
sector; and fourth, that implementing the DARPA model is the best way
to improve energy research given the tight federal budget,” he said.
Boehlert
added that he thought the first assumption was wrong. “The biggest
barrier to new energy technologies is not supply; it’s demand. And
until the government is willing to institute policies to stimulate
demand – or until oil gets to a dangerously high price – it’s going to
be very hard for new technologies to enter or dominate the market,” he
said.
Ranking Member Bart Gordon, D-TN, who recently introduced
legislation that would create an ARPA-E, HR 4435, said, “Establishing
an ARPA-E is a bold step, but it just may be the tool that gets the job
done.”
Similar ARPA-E legislation, S 2197, was marked up in a
Senate Committee on March 8, and appears to be on the fast track with
bipartisan support.
Source: ARPA-E
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