ARPA-E Funds 66 Cutting-Edge Energy Technologies With $130M

“Funding things that other people won’t fund”

Eric Wesoff November 29, 2012

Eric Wesoff

Editor-at-Large
Greentech Media

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.

There are differences in opinion about the wisdom of governments picking winners or losers in an ostensibly free market. There are sound arguments on both sides.

But few would suggest that the government has no place in funding basic research.

Cheryl Martin, Deputy Director for Commercialization for the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), spoke at a recent AlwaysOn event in San Francisco and noted that ARPA-E is about "funding things that other people won't fund."

Along those lines, Energy Secretary Steven Chu just announced 66 cutting-edge research projects selected by ARPA-E to garner a total of $130 million in funding through its “OPEN 2012” program. These are potentially disruptive technologies that are too early for private-sector investment.

The selected projects in twenty-four states span eleven technology areas including:

Advanced fuels
Advanced vehicle design and materials
Building efficiency
Grid modernization
Carbon capture
Renewable power
Energy storage

Approximately 47 percent of the projects are led by universities, 29 percent by small businesses, 7.5 percent by national labs, and 1.5 percent by non-profits. ARPA-E’s has funded about 285 projects with approximately $770 million in awards.

We're going to home in on a few of the grant winners over the coming weeks; look for a profile on Dr. Harry Atwater's approach to achieving greater than 50 percent solar efficiency at Caltech. But in the meantime, here's a list of the recipients reprinted from the ARPA-E document (click to enlarge):