Energy-Geek: President Obama Ups the Clean Electricity Ante by a Interesting $a hundred and fifty Million

Sunday, February 12, 2012

President Obama Ups the Clean Electricity Ante by a Interesting $a hundred and fifty Million

Obviously undeterred by the GOP’s ongoing energy to minimize federal assistance for clean up electricity, the Obama Administration has just announced a new $ one hundred fifty million round of funding for reducing-edge analysis into solar, wind, geothermal, bio-based mostly vitality and ocean electrical power along with dozens of other groups associated to renewable power and vitality performance. The funds are coming through the Sophisticated Study Assignments Company-Vitality (ARPA-E), an company is modeled after DARPA, the legendary Section of Defense investigation plan that created the Net. If ARPA-E can occur anyplace around that accomplishment, it looks like the U.S. is in for much more than a little modify in the fossil fuel position quo.

New cleanse energy tech trumps fossil gas era

ARPA-E’s funding announcement is nevertheless in the draft stage but it calls exclusively for advanced electricity projects that have actual-world apps with “the possible to be disruptive in the market place.”

If you’re questioning what that implies, the draft announcement supplies the example of the Style T Ford. Until the Type T came all around, automotive technology was progressing incrementally, in an uneasy co-existence with carriage producing. That could have lasted for generations, but the Design T blew up the transportation market and brought the horse and buggy era to a speedy halt – not always by making a leap in automotive technology for each se, but by transforming the creation and advertising and marketing aspect.

Sub in “fossil fuels” for “carriage,” and that’s the route we’re heading in.

ARPA-E primes the pot

ARPA-E was established in the Division of Power by Congress in 2007 with the mission of kick-commencing investigation top straight to new tech breakthroughs with strong prospective for industrial creation, but it was not funded till 2009, when Recovery Act funding became available underneath the Obama Administration. So far in its quick existence, ARPA-E has pumped about $ five hundred million into more than 180 initiatives.

Renewable power that skips the middleman

One particular of the much more promising locations of investigation is the agency’s electrofuels software, which bargains with the creation of liquid fuels by harnessing the metabolic processes of residing microorganisms. Electrofuels essentially skip the actions concerned in transforming fossils or biomass to fuel. ARPA-E is presently funding about a dozen tasks in this area, and it has just began to solicit a new round. The Division of Defense is also doing work on some assignments of its personal involving microbial gas cells.

Many routes to a new power potential

Electrofuels are just the tip of the iceberg, however. With the new $ 150 million funding package, ARPA-E is casting a vast net. In addition to renewable fuel technologies, the draft announcement seeks tasks relating to drinking water purification, energy-productive lighting technologies and constructing components, electricity storage, targeted traffic administration such as self-driving vehicles, and transformative models for all varieties of automobiles such as aircraft, cars, ships, trains, and vehicles powered by individual electricity.

The start of the end for fossil fuels

The company is even open up to hunting at breakthrough improvements in typical electrical power generation such as nuclear technologies, as well as new techniques to mix old and new energy technologies.

However, as far as fossil fuels go any new investigation will only delay the inescapable. In the draft announcement, ARPA-E basically positions its mission as one of getting ready the

nation for a tender landing as we reach the stop of the era of comparatively low cost fossil fuels:

“Although the United States possesses considerable quantities of some hydrocarbon sources, other folks are presently inadequate to satisfy domestic desire, and even those means that are abundant are finite and will sooner or later be depleted. These days the United States imports some nine million barrels of oil per day, approximately fifty percent the country’s complete want, at a expense of almost $ 1 billion per day and accounting for above a 3rd of the US trade deficit. Equally coal and normal gasoline exports from the United States to producing economies will increase price pressures on these vital assets.”

In this context it is not astonishing that fossil gas business leaders such as the Koch brothers are documented to have pledged $ 500 million to thwarting President Obama’s re-election bid – coincidentally or not, the very same sum that ARPA-E has previously spent on nurturing new vitality industries.

Picture: Poker chips. License Some rights reserved by sean_oliver.