An Assessment of ARPA-E (2017) / Chapter Skim
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2 Overview of ARPA-E
2 Overview of ARPA-E
Pages 21-46
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. The purpose of that report was to recommend specific federal government actions with the potential to maintain and expand U.S.
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For ARPA-E, a program refers to a specific focused technology funding opportunity and the research projects funded under it. These always have a narrow, defined scope, limited duration, and no permanent staff.
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Fairly or not, ARPA-E is sometimes compared and contrasted with DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) , a much larger research organization with 700 employees, hundreds of contractors, and seven field offices (Ling, 2013)
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An Assessment of ARPA-E 24 FIGURE 2-1 Schematic of ARPA-E's internal process for program creation, project selection, and performer management. Copyright National Academy of Sciences.
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8 Agency Mission and Goals Congress statutorily defined ARPA-E's mission as to "overcome the long term and high-risk technology barriers in the development of energy technologies." 9 The agency's basic statutory goals are to develop technologies that reduce imports of fossil fuel, reduce energy-related emissions, improve energy efficiency in all economic sectors, and ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in the development and deployment of advanced energy technologies. 10 Additionally, the statute directs ARPA-E to pursue these objectives through particular means: • identifying and promoting revolutionary advances in fundamental and applied sciences; • translating scientific discoveries and cutting-edge inventions into technological innovations; and • accelerating transformational technological advances in areas industry is unlikely to undertake.
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18 Powers Vested in Program Directors Similar to DARPA program managers, ARPA-E program directors are accorded wide latitude in identifying research themes; creating new programs; making funding recommendations to the director; supervising projects; identifying commercial opportunities; and, when necessary, terminating projects. 19 Program directors are expected to identify "innovative cost-sharing arrangements" for ARPA-E projects (albeit subject to the limitations established by federal cost-sharing regulations)
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Consequently, ARPA-E's director is responsible for "terminating programs carried out under this section that are not achieving the goals of the programs." 24 Program directors are responsible for "recommending program restructure or termination of partnerships between awardees and commercial entities." 25 The Conference Report on the 2007 America COMPETES Act states: Similar to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency the Director is to establish and monitor milestones, initiate research projects quickly, and just as quickly terminate or restructure projects if such milestones are not achieved (H.
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As noted above, ARPA-E began operations in 2009, when the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 provided $15 million in funding, augmented in that year by $400 million in special funding appropriated from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, also commonly known as "the Stimulus")
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Early agency personnel said that building the agency from scratch under the aegis of the America COMPETES Act's special authorities allowed it to exist outside of the normal "layers of bureaucracy." Although modeling the new agency on DARPA was not taken as a given, they eventually decided to look to DARPA as a model for many of ARPA-E's structural features and operational practices. Zan Alexander, a former DARPA deputy director, served as a consultant to ARPA-E, and her experience facilitated the adoption of a number of DARPA practices (Marks, 2014)
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• Project selection -- ARPA-E's early funded projects focused on themes that included extremely efficient photovoltaic solar collectors, batteries for transportation, wind turbines, and geothermal energy (Lawrence and Abramson, 2014)
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. 30 ARPA-E's original staff included a former DARPA program manager and an experienced DARPA advisor and performer.
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Program Creation As of the time of this study, new programs appear to arise almost solely because a prospective program director pitches the idea as part of his or her interview for the position. Once a program and its program director are accepted, ARPA-E begins a new program with a "deep dive" -- a comprehensive exploration of an energy-related theme aimed at identifying individual topics that represent potential projects for the development of technologies that would FIGURE 2-3 ARPA-E's depiction of how it has built itself on a foundation modeled after DARPA.
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These white spaces can be of at least two kinds, as shown in Figure 2-4. First, a white space can be a gap in the funding pipeline of all government and private R&D funding (e.g., no funding available for a specific technology at technology readiness level [TRL]
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. Once ARPA-E has identified technological white spaces, program directors convene technical workshops to consult leading experts from relevant scientific, engineering, and commercial communities, an exercise that informs the project development process and helps break down silos between disciplines.
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• How much better will the new technology be than existing technologies along quantitative metrics? Technical • What are the key technical challenges, and what Approach are the ideas for overcoming them?
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TABLE 2-2 Example of Focused Program Technical Targets from the MOSAIC Program Announced in 2014 Subcategory 1A: High-DNI System with Macro-Tracking ID Description Target 1A.1 Solar energy harvesting efficiency > 30% at module output 1A.2 Production cost < $125/m2 1A.3 Array height < 2.5 cm 1A.4 Projected system degradation < 1%/year Subcategory 1B: High-DNI System with Embedded Micro-Tracking ID Description Target 1B.1 Solar energy harvesting efficiency > 30% at module output 1B.2 Production cost < $150/m2 1B.3 Array height < 2.5 cm 1B.4 Projected system degradation < 1%/year SOURCE: ARPA-E, 2014b, p.
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Each FOA is accompanied by a Merit Review Plan, which is executed by an ARPA-E Merit Review Board. In carrying out the Merit Review Plan, a Merit Review Board, usually chaired by the program director who proposed the project and will oversee it, reviews and discusses the lists of papers with the program director, and the list is finalized through consensus.
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. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the applications and assign numerical scores, and provide comments according to four broad sets of criteria listed below, two of which -- impact of the proposed technology and scientific/technical merit -- are carried forward from the concept paper stage: • Impact of the proposed technology relative to the current state of the art (30 percent)
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Applicants are allowed to read reviewers' comments and submit rebuttal comments before the Merit Review Board makes funding recommendations. The Merit Review Board then considers the evaluations, any rebuttal comments from applicants, and the technical merit review criteria and program policy considerations, and makes its recommendation to the ARPA-E "selection official" (the ARPA-E director)
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Most of ARPA-E's projects are based on focused, thesis-driven programs centered on a theory of change. However, the agency's initial personnel decided that focused programs should be augmented by the occasional open solicitations discussed earlier, intended to cast a broad net and encourage novel and creative ideas that staff had not yet conceived of and that had the potential to inspire whole new programs (Danielson, 2015)
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. Under the America COMPETES Act, program directors are responsible for "identifying innovative cost-sharing arrangements for ARPA-E projects." 40 However, the agency's awards remain governed by general federal cost-sharing rules and requirements, which limit innovative arrangements (ARPA-E, 2015a)
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Our researchers can stay focused on the project at hand and hopefully knock down these technical challenges to get these technologies moving and change our energy future." Personal consultation with ARPA-E Deputy Director Cheryl Martin, The Energy Collective (August 8, 2013)
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An initial program kickoff meeting is held to convene all of the performers from a given focused technology program, provide thumbnail overviews of all of the projects in the program, and begin providing awardees with information on such subjects as technical challenges and scientific ideas by means of tutorials and invited talks. Program directors subsequently engage in "active project management," which includes review of quarterly performer reports, regular site visits, meetings, conference calls, and written feedback on results and reported quarterly progress.
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43 Statement of ARPA-E Director Arun Majumdar, U.S. Congress, House Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies, Appropriations Committee, Budget Hearing, March 28, 2012.
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Innovative Materials and Processes for Advanced Carbon 15 41.0 Capture Technologies (IMPACCT) Electrofuels 13 48.7 Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology (ADEPT)
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NOTE: Funding amount for the CHARGES program redacted due to the small number of awardees.
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