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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