So Long, ARPA-E
Trump’s “Budget for a Better America” is great if you’re part of the military-industrial complex, as it calls for a huge increase in “defense” spending and almost $9 billion to build (at least a piece of) a wall on the southern border. But it’s terrible for essentially everyone else, and especially those with lungs, as it slashes spending for environmental regulation, and economic stimuli for the development of new, clean technology.
In particular, the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which is our nation’s flagship research and development program for innovative clean energy technologies, is eliminated completely.
As I wrote on the plane coming home from the ARPA-E event in Washington, DC a couple of years ago:
(The event) makes us proud to be Americans, a phenomenon that doesn’t happen every day of the week. In a day in which people of any level of intelligence and decency are suffering the humiliation of the ascendancy of Donald Trump, it sure is refreshing to see something good happening in the public sector. It’s popular here to believe that government in any and all of its forms is corrupt, bloated, and ineffectual. While ARPA-E isn’t perfect, it’s achieved some really stellar results: more than $1.25 billion has been secured in private sector follow-on funding, 36 projects have formed new companies, 60 projects have partnered with other government agencies for further development, and an ever increasing number of technologies have already been incorporated into products that are being sold in the market. The full list of ARPA-E projects announced today is available here. In the words of FedEx CEO Fred Smith, “Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, activity for activity, it is hard to find a thing the United States has done that is more effective than ARPA-E.
The problem here, of course, is that facts have long ceased to matter. The fact that ARPA-E is one of the best conceivable expenditures of taxpayer money is buried beneath a mountain of presidential tweets and other distractions. That America is sabotaging its capacity to develop relevant technology, merely so that it can protract the use of dirty energy, is known to fewer and fewer people as time passes.
Craig,
As usual, you only ever read one side of any issue. An internal report by the DOE and confirmed by the Inspector-General, identified 78% of the projects by ARPA-E, were duplicating the efforts of other divisions of the DOE.
The remaining 22% , could without any loss, be reassigned to other departments within the DOE.
The cost cutting measures may reduce the number of little ’empires’ and senior administrators, will result in a leaner and more focused DOE.
Naturally, those with vested interests in organizations like ARPA-E will defend their turf, and every government department of funded project, no matter how futile or wasteful will always find supporters among those with vested interests.