An annual gathering of government-backed scientists opened ominously March 13, as Congress weighs a budget proposal from President Donald Trump that would eliminate the agency charged with carrying out cutting-edge energy research.
"We are at a crossroads, but until we're told to do something different, we need to keep thinking about the future," Chris Fall, principal deputy director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, said at the start of the agency's Energy Innovation Summit outside Washington, D.C. Whatever happens, Fall said, "you can be proud of this group of people and proud of the fact that this government was able to put that kind of team together in such a short period of time."
Trump proposed eliminating ARPA-E, which was authorized as part of the U.S. Department of Energy in 2007 because the private sector, rather than the federal government, has the "primary role in taking risks to commercialize breakthrough energy technologies with real market potential," according to the president's fiscal-year 2019 budget proposal.
Defying Trump's first attempt to shut down the agency, Congress in May increased ARPA-E's funding for fiscal year 2017 by 5%, and a bipartisan bill introduced in the House of Representatives would provide funding for the program through 2022.
Critics say the administration wants to abandon the kind of work that leads to breakthroughs in energy technology and that a trend toward shorter-term investing has left many companies without the means to support early stage research. A 2017 assessment of the agency by the National Academies of Sciences found that 74 ARPA-E projects had attracted $1.8 billion in private funding for pilot projects and that many of the technologies investigated by ARPA-E had received additional funding from other federal agencies, particularly the U.S. Defense Department.
Quantum jumps
"We don't need marginal improvements; we need quantum jumps," said Norm Augustine, co-chairman of the American Energy Innovation Council and the former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corp. Hydraulic fracturing technology, which was developed through government-funded research, gave the U.S. "a partial reprieve during which it could invent longer-term solutions to the energy challenges that we face" — namely the need for long-term sources of "clean, sustainable and affordable energy," he added.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry is scheduled to testify March 15 before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on the administration's latest budget request for the DOE. In addition to cutting ARPA-E, which was funded with $306 million in fiscal year 2017, Trump's budget would cut the department's budget by more than 3% to $29 billion.
"The Budget focuses resources on early-stage research and development (R&D) of energy technologies and reflects an increased reliance on the private sector to fund later-stage demonstration and commercialization activities," according to the document.
Despite the Trump administration's proposal to eliminate ARPA-E, Pual Dabbar, DOE undersecretary for science, said the agency is an important part of the department's efforts to advance U.S. innovation.
If the agency survives, Fall said, ARPA-E would try to move more quickly to shift money away from projects and programs that are not working. He also said the agency is interested in working on some of the issues Perry has prioritized, including the resilience of the electric grid, cybersecurity for infrastructure, and advanced fossil and nuclear energy technology.
"Those are things that we can work on today. We can do that," Fall said.
Asked what he would say to Perry on the issue of government funding, Augustine said the country's economy and national security depend on research and education, both of which have long payoff periods. "So it will take a great deal of courage and effort to continue to sustain the research base in this country," he said.
