ARPA-E: 3 Home Runs Out of 37 At-Bats Wouldn’t Be Bad, Chu Says

Energy Secretary Steven Chu thinks a three-for-37 home run average is just fine.

That is, out of the 37 "high-risk, high-reward" energy technology projects funded by the Department of Energy's ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy) program on Monday, "If we can get three home runs, that's terrific," Chu said.

Chu was speaking at Google's campus in Mountain View, Calif. on Monday to mark DOE's first, $151-million round of grants from the ARPA-E project, meant to boost experimental energy technologies.

Among the 37 winners were several Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinouts – 1366 Technologies, SunCatalyx, FastCap Systems and FloDesign Wind Turbine – as well as winners ranging from General Motors to a host of university research projects (see MIT, Storage, 'Direct Solar' Among DOE Research Grant Winners).

All are aiming for "transformative" technologies that can change the energy industry in a way similar to the Internet's effect on information technology, Chu said – thus, the appearance at Google.

Which projects might be home runs? Chu didn't specify, but mentioned boosting renewable energy from wind and solar, replacing fossil fuels for transportation, and finding ways to capture and store carbon from coal-fired power plants as likely candidates.

ARPA-E was created in the 2007 energy bill but wasn't funded until the stimulus package directed about $400 million to it (see Green Light post). Chu declined to say when ARPA-E would next announce grants, beyond saying that announcements could come "very, very soon."

Among the billions of dollars in grants and loans DOE is putting toward renewable energy, smart grid, energy efficiency and carbon capture and storage projects, ARPA-E represent the most risky (see DOE Stimulus Spending: $17B So Far, $30B by Year's End).

But Chu said they're necessary to help the United States regain the initiative in what he called the "second industrial revolution, which the world needs to go through."

"If we look at China, they're now spending more than $100 billion a year in developing clean energy," he noted (see GridWeek: Chu Lays Out DOE's Smart Grid Vision, Standards to Come).

Chu also said that legal caps on emitting greenhouse gases would be critical for boosting a U.S. green technology revolution – something he said he plans to tell the U.S. Senate on Tuesday as it takes up a controversial energy and climate bill that includes a cap-and-trade provision to limit CO2 emissions from energy producers and other big emitters (see Green Light posts here and here).

In a talk with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Chu mentioned a few other focuses of the DOE, including finding ways to reuse more enriched uranium created in nuclear power plants to fuel new generations of reactors (see The U.S. Left Behind in Nuclear).

He also said he'd push for policies to incentivize new electricity transmission lines to carry renewable power, as well as find ways to make them big enough to be expanded over the decades (see Tres Amigas: Triple-Linking Transmission Grids and Green Light post).