In an earlier post, I looked at a new
battery-manufacturing consortium that's likely to get a $1 billion boost from the Department of Energy. Incoming Energy Secretary Steven Chu, I noted, champions the idea of government investment in alt energy development.
So, what other routes might such investment take after Chu takes office?
Perhaps one would be the DOE's new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, known as ARPA-E. Patterned after Darpa, or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (which played an important role in creating the Internet), ARPA-E was authorized in 2007 but has yet to be funded,
according to a report on a site called opencrs.
Creation of ARPA-E was one of a number of recommendations made in an
influential bipartisan report on U.S. technological competitiveness, issued in 2005 and called "Rising above the gathering storm." Chu was on the committee that produced the report and links to it in his profile on the Web site of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab, which he directs.
Not everyone on the committee thought ARPA-E was a good idea; former ExxonMobil Corp. chairman Lee Raymond, for example, opposed it.The idea also met some skeptics in Congress, who like Raymond think there's already plenty of money fueling fuel research.
It's not clear from these sources how enthusiastic Chu might be about ARPA-E. But it looks like a tool he can pick up quickly if he's so inclined. -
Kenneth Klee
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