ARPA-e Grants Miss Their Mark

Dear Mr. Taxpayer,

Many of us in the business of promoting alternative transportation are involved with it for a myriad of reasons, but most of those reasons can be linked to our single desire to improve the ecology of the world around us all-the-while enjoying the benefits of personal transportation and progressive engineering. To that end many of us involved with the technological aspects of clean, abundant energy hailed the new ARPA-E division of the Department of Energy as beacon of hope; a promised ‘light’ to guide the discounted and ridiculed projects being done in ‘Joe Inventor’s’ garage out into the open, and past the incredibly dense blockage of naysayers and NIH technocrats looking to protect their ivory towers, archaic engineering practices and profits at all cost.

ARPA-E offered up over $150 Million to entice us out of the woodwork with promises of giving us an honest, unbiased opinion as to whether or not our untried technology has a chance to make a difference (where so many of the recognized leaders of industry could not) and not discard us just because we didn’t work for or with the ‘big boys’ (like GM or MIT). They were willing to put their money where their ‘mouth’ is and fund us out of our garages and into academia for any amount of scrutinizing we could stand.

We all accepted this challenge and inundated them with [literally] thousands of ideas worth considering. Sure, many were just ideas on the back of some napkin, and others where nothing more than flights of fantasy, but many were not. They promised to help us help America and bring back its innovative spirit and show the world we can take the lead on transformational technology and alternative energy production. They wanted US to take the lead on clean energy innovation and to create tens of thousands of new jobs right in our backyards.

I don’t know if you were aware of it but the DoE, ARPA-E just selected their grant recipients for this last round of funding and (to put it bluntly) you, I, the United States of America and almost every American taxpayer just got screwed.

Right or wrong, many of us thought our technology to be a good fit for this ARPA-E grant of which I speak (DE-FOA-0000065) as it was specifically set up to do three things:

• Reduce GHG and Carbon emissions


• Enhance energy security


• Restore science and technology leadership to the private sectors of America.

More specifically, none of this was to be done within the halls of our national federally funded laboratories (or within the bowels of large, stagnant corporations who only placate the public with ‘promises’ of innovation and then deliver the same old song), it was supposed to wean us off burning fossil fuels over due time, and (most importantly) it was to support technology that creates a lot of jobs and in a timely manner (24 to 36 months). This was spelled out in black and white so to that end many of us spent a great deal of personal time and money to apply for these grants. Here was our chance to shine and prove our worth.

Unfortunately, only one or two of us got that chance. There rest went right back to the same old pockets and same old tired story. You may like what you hear, but let me sum it up for you, Mr. Taxpayer:

With the exception of about $30M, none of this ARPA-E grant monies neither funded technology that is even remotely aligned with these goals or (for the small share that they did fund) they gave the lion’s share to universities, gas/oil/car companies (or to national laboratories) all of which are already very well funded and shouldn’t have to ask for this kind of funding in the first place. It begs to be asked: what have they been doing for the last 20 years if not this?

I have gone over the published list of recipients for the $151M that was given out for review (and you can do the same here: http://arpa-e.energy.gov/.) Let me save you some time and map out the distributions as follows:

Directly (or indirectly) a lot of the funded was divided up as follows:

• $43M directly to universities (none in all but a few states; and if you think that this amount will create in-so-much-as one additional job in this country think again)


• $27.3M to Gas, Oil or Automotive companies (none in all but a few states)


• $15M to national DoE funded labs (none in all but a few states)

• $41.4M to Biomass fuels/technologies (which has no hope of displacing oil on a national level, still propagates internal combustion engines AND does not burn GHG or Carbon free)


• $33.3M to Advance Battery Technology/Energy Storage (even if it offers any hope of being “transformational” none of them has a prayer of getting out of the lab in 36 months, not a one. And, aren’t we funding these already through other means?)


• $15M to Building Efficiency/Technologies (I can’t help but ask “what’s transformational about that?” And who benefits? The power companies? The consumers? Public rates have never gone down despite the incredible amount of conserving already being done. Who are we helping?)


• $11M to 5 different Carbon Capture projects (not a penny to KY or W VA, the two states that need it the most, and [worst yet] this does nothing to reduce GHG or Carbon emissions, it only makes it worse. In the end it only stashes this problem away for our grandkids to figure out a way to deal with it.)


• $10.2M to Gas/Oil/Automotive companies and their affiliates (didn’t the US Government already give them funds to help them become more ‘transformational’? How did these even get in there?)

Of the $151M handed out, only about $9.0M went to truly transformational technology, through private companies and towards technology that can possibly be mainstreamed in less than 36 months. Sadly, only $21M went to Wind, Solar and Geothermal energy technologies. Besides geothermal energy (which is spotty at best and not very scalable) none of these others can claim the peak performance power generation 24/7/365 that hydropower can. But here is the part I don’t understand: Not a dime went to hydropower or hydrokinetic technologies. Not one dime. (And I know that besides ours there were several others on the table worth considering.)

ARPA-E did announce that they will come out with another round of requests for funding proposals and rest assured that if we qualify for what they are asking for, we will pursue them as well. But please let this short essay serve as a heads-up for those desperately trying to believe in our government, and the choices it makes for the welfare of its citizens. Our group feigns to find anything good to say about this gross misuse of trust in those trying to make America a world leader in clean energy and advanced ‘transformative’ technology. We had so hoped it wasn’t going to turn out as it had. We are upset; you should be too.

EV WORLD EDITOR: In the interest of full disclosure, the author and EV World & Associates LLC. have a "dog in this hunt," having applied for and been denied ARPA-e funding for our HydroKinetic Lab HyPEGS technology. While we congratulate the winners, we believe DOE did not fulfill the obligations in which technologies they awarded, too many of which continue to perpetuate the continued use of fossil fuels.