Friday, December 3, 2010

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U.S. Energy Sec. Chu hopeful ARPA-E funding will continue

By Kyle Alspach

Despite the national mood against things like “government spending,” “climate science” and also “science,” top U.S. energy official Steven Chu is optimistic that a major clean energy research program, known as ARPA-E, will get funding for another year.

Maybe that’s not a surprise. But with the House of Representatives soon to be the House of Republicans, many have doubted that money for ARPA-E would show up in the Department of Energy budget for 2011.

You see, ARPA-E — which has given $63 million to Massachusetts cleantech firms with promising but risky technology — got its funding from the one-shot deal that was the stimulus. And the new members of the incoming Congress don’t like the stimulus, we are told.

On Thursday, DOE Secretary Chu took a tour of one of the ARPA-E companies, Lexington solar technology developer 1366 Technologies. When asked during the event about the likelihood that ARPA-E will continue, Chu said he believes the chances are actually good. “I think Congress has recognized what a value this is,” said Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics.

While ARPA-E dished out $400 million in its first year, some business groups — including Bill Gates’ American Energy Innovation Council — have actually recommended increasing the program to $1 billion or more, Chu noted.

Executives at 1366 say the $4 million in ARPA-E funding was crucial. It helped the company to rapidly develop an efficient new process for making solar wafers from silicon and also aided in attracting $20 million in new venture money, the execs say. The big picture: the technology could slash the cost of wafers by up to 80 percent and be a powerful tool in making solar power competitive with coal, according to the firm.

Companies like 1366, Chu said, show not only that ARPA-E is valuable, but also that it’s not inevitable that China will dominate America’s clean energy industry in coming years. The company’s progress helps to prove that the American cleantech industry “need not be afraid of any country” or “any other outside technology,” he said.

There’s no question that ARPA-E matters a lot to Massachusetts, or at least to the growing clean technology sector. Sixteen companies in the Bay State took home awards, representing 17 percent of the total dollars given out.

But do other states, which got no funding and have no prospects of getting any in the future, really care about the program? Or more importantly, do their lawmakers?

I guess Chu is not terribly worried about this. We’ll find out soon enough whether he’s right.