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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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[This special issue podcast is longer than the usual 60 seconds.]
Last week, the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for energy held its inaugural conference in Washington, D.C.—a direct response to a growing sense that the U.S. is losing its technology lead when it comes to the race for cleaner ways to produce and use energy. "We have a Sputnik moment right now. We are losing our technology leadership and we are falling behind."
That's Arun Majumdar, the first director of ARPA-E . "Our role is to take the high-risk, high-payoff approach to developing technologies which are sort of swinging for the home runs. Business as usual and the pace of innovation is jut not fast enough."
The hope is that by seeking novel technologies, like turning a bottle of water into an energy storage device , the U.S. can recapture the lead in the "green revolution" underway in the multi-trillion dollar global energy market.
After all, European companies dominate renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines or solar thermal power plants . And China is leapfrogging ahead to produce cheap photovoltaic solar cells . "They missed the first Industrial Revolution, they missed the computer revolution, a lot of the biology revolution, they want to be a leader in the new industrial revolution towards a green energy future," says our secretary of energy Steven Chu of the Chinese. "We should be a leader, the leader in this new green energy revolution."
That's where the $80 billion in stimulus money directly targeted towards energy comes in, including the $400 million for this new ARPA-e effort, an effort meant to mimic the success of DARPA in the world of defense technologies. DARPA is the secretive agency that can be blamed for everything from the Internet to stealth bombers.
There doesn't seem to be a shortage of good ideas on energy. Initial funding will explore everything from liquid metal batteries that store large amounts of electricity to cheaper ways of making solar cells from silicon. As Chu says "There are hundreds that we believe should be worthy of funding."
—David Biello
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12 Comments
Add CommentWhy waste money on CCS when we can remove carbon from hydrocarbons before burning them? The hydrogen can supply electricity and the carbon be buried in land-fill sites near the extraction sites. The whole refining cycle would be simplified and would transform our foul carbon society into a clean hydrogen one. Fossil fuels, including methane could tide us over until alternative energy sources are discovered.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee http://tinyurl.com/hydrogenhoax and http://tinyurl.com/hydrogenknol. Methane better idea and the more bio carbon chains the better. Hydrogen not energy, or cost effective and unlikely to be so...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ecosteve
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo - you're taking the carbon ,are you ?
To quote.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The hope is that by seeking novel technologies....".
This is what we hear, yet when the US dept. of energy is sent an email regarding wind Turbine-Alternator devices in general - and one in particular which shows all the other's up for what they are - a Window dressing while we go nuclear - absolutely Nothing happens. The silence is deafening.
Why did we decrease our need to increase our world age.Consume less energy long life The Earth.May Sufficient Economic Life is for all.NIRVANA.....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe already have the tech to go clean RE now if we would just make, use them. And in mass production they will be less costly than fossil fuels.
We can easily by thinking next time we buy stuff, especially a car, home, just how much energy they need. There really is no need to build homes that need outside energy and even charge an EV. The Solar Decathalon in DC showed as many others now do just this at their homes.
Small wind tech peaked in the 30's and only recently been as good as before. But now it's only $1.5k/kw, magnets4less.com and work for 50yrs. Most homes can do with 2kw of wind generator.
What's needed is a low cost solar CSP power and heat unit that can be fired by wood pellets or any fuel if power/heat is needed and the sun doesn't shine.
Another is CHP where you make electric before you use the heat for heating or whenever it's worth it to make money off of peak power.
Using FT to make yard, crop, forest waste biomass into gas, diesel, chemicals and electric, process heat.
What we really need is for fossil fuels to [pay their full, real costs not even including CO2, would make it a fair market. Fossil fuel subsidies are why we are having these problems as they have distorted the market but that is changing as their costs rise anyway.
"There doesn't seem to be a shortage of good ideas on energy."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow can you possibly know if they are good ideas? Until they are implemented on a suitable scale and found to be efficacious and sustainable, they remain just ideas. Certainly, there is no shortage of ideas, as the almost constant stream of articles from SciAm shows. However, the only thing that proves, at the moment, is that there is growing recognition that we have an energy problem. At least that is something. It might turned out, though, that none of those plentiful ideas are better than conservation and powering down.
When I discovered here in Canada the technology of the Flying Saucer, I thought myfortunew was made. It could be used for real space travel and there were many spin-0ffs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA Flying Saucer "taps" power right out of the aether, just like Tesla did in 1931 with his Pierce Arrow Car.
Of course that technology had no place in Nasa
Nasa was "Not interested" in the technology, it would make the Propulsion Engineers obsolete and they did not want to kill the Goose that laid Golden Eggs .
In Canada the invention was ridiculed up to four months after the patents were granted. Then the "Scientists in Charge" called it a Minor invention and no funding,
Google : One Terminal Capacitor Joseph.. and wonder..
Fund me $50 Million and we will equip the Shuttles with some technology that will allow them to fly to the Moon in an hour,
land there (it will be VTOL!) have a picnic and go on to Mars in a few hours more.
That would of course mean that the USA still would rule space.
If they are not interested maybe I should offer it to Russia or India.
Whoever rules Space, rules the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe US is brave to recognize and admit its inadequacy in clean energy technology.
But why would it need to start an agency for innovative energy when the Energy Department under Secretary Chu has been doing a good job?
Is there a necessity to duplicate the effort especially when the fund sources are lean under the new national budget?
Government is wasteful when doling out "seed" money. Government officials don't look at the whole picture and often fund redundant projects based, not upon need, but upon politician demands. Ethanol is a great example because it is a failed fuel that is fraught with problems. www.opei.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/1926. It is corrosive, more volatile, causes more pollution, lowers energy efficiency, increases danger for firefighters and equipment operators, and expensive. Yet ARPA ignores the science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen there are the windmills. ARPA-E funds research there too but ignores the upstream supply chain. We don't have the rare earth elements critical to manufacturing the finished products. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/business/global/01minerals.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1 All we end up doing is subsidizing the Chinese (with money we borrowed from them).
Until ARPA becomes de-politicized, it is a waste of declining taxpayer money.
And I wish the press would report the bigger issue.
"The hope is that by seeking novel technologies, like turning a bottle of water into an energy storage device , the U.S. can recapture the lead in the "green revolution" underway in the multi-trillion dollar global energy market. " ????
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid you read this article???? This is so bogus. What is David Biello thinking?
The Energy Dept is suppose to give us energy independence but they have failed in the past. VC's are investing in promising technologies that are commercially feasible not just "pie in the sky" ideas. DARPA may have started the Internet but it was hackers, VC funded companies, and the open structure that made it successful. Imagine if the Internet were run by the government?
ennui....spent the last couple of days researching your claims...most of them are like urban legends...the one patient i found was for johnson(4151431)...issued in 1979...very interesting....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisoff hand it looks like it violates the laws of conservation of energy...yet they granted it....
if i had the time and resources i might try it myself...who knows...maybe i will;-)