Threatened energy research program gets high marks

Although it is too soon to expect technologies to result from the projects it funds, the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA–E) is clearly achieving its mission and goals, says a congressionally ordered review released 13 June. The eight-year-old Department of Energy program backs high-risk energy technologies that no other public or private source will support. The main criticism from the report’s authors, a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, is that the agency may be too selective in funding only ventures that its managers consider transformative.

The mostly positive review should provide ARPA–E’s supporters on Capitol Hill ammunition with which to defend the program from the Trump administration’s proposed termination next year. Congress in May approved a 5% increase in ARPA–E’s appropriations from its fiscal year 2016 level, to $306 million.

Cost-shared grants from ARPA–E support a broad range of potentially high-payoff technologies in areas such as mobile and stationary batteries, biomass, and highly efficient solar cells. The report specifically cites Foro Energy’s system for transmitting high-power laser light via fiber-optic cables to weld or ablate materials and a slippery coating developed by Harvard University for use in oil and water pipelines, wastewater treatment, refrigeration, and solar panels.

Since ARPA–E received its initial appropriation in 2009, one-quarter of its supported projects or project teams have received follow-on funding, half have had their results published in peer-reviewed journals, and 13% have obtained patents, the report states. Congress ordered that a review be conducted after six years of ARPA–E operations. The committee’s assessment took two years to produce.

The review panel expressed some frustration in having to assess ARPA–E before the outcomes of the projects it funds are evident, but it noted that the agency “is not failing and is not in need of reform. In fact, attempts to reform the agency—such as applying pressure for ARPA–E to show short-term successes rather than focusing on its long-term mission and goals—would pose a significant risk of harming its efforts and chances of achieving its mission and goals.”

National Academy of Engineering president C. Dan Mote, a member of the 2007 National Academies committee that proposed ARPA–E’s creation, credited former energy secretary Steven Chu and Arun Majumdar, ARPA–E’s inaugural director, for the program’s success. The agency was authorized in the 2007 America COMPETES Act but wasn’t funded for another two years. In a departure from other parts of DOE, broad authority is given to ARPA–E program managers to select projects for funding without external review. The managers, who are recruited from industry, serve three-year terms with the possibility of a single three-year extension. They actively manage the projects and can alter goals and budgets.

Some of ARPA–E’s other management practices, such as convening workshops to help define programs, prescreening grant applicants to reduce the number of full applications requiring review, and terminating underperforming projects early on, have found their way into other DOE programs. The committee called for incentives to encourage greater ARPA–E interaction with other DOE program offices to “potentially help reduce DOE’s bureaucratic culture.”

Report committee member Louis Schick, chief technology officer of New World Capital Group, offered some criticism at a briefing on the report: ARPA–E doesn’t adequately communicate its successes to the general public, which is a “vital part of its mission.” The agency also tries too hard to ensure that each project it supports is transformational, he said, when that term is meant to apply only to ARPA–E’s overall mission.

Committee chair Pradeep Khosla declined to specify what level of funding ARPA–E should receive, saying the matter was not within the panel’s mandate. Khosla, who is chancellor of the University of California, San Diego, said the agency is taking on an adequate level of risk in the projects it funds. The report calls for promotion and maintenance of the “high-risk culture.”

Among the committee’s other recommendations for ARPA–E are maintaining its novel management practices, developing a framework for better measuring progress toward achieving goals, and compiling lessons learned from all projects, including those that are terminated. In addition, ARPA–E should reconceptualize its “tech to market” program, which tries to give researchers business and other nontechnical support to ensure projects move toward commercialization.