Competing for energy security
Posted March 11, 2010 at 9:11 am 
Filed in: Today’s E&E (http://www.eenews.net/EEDaily/2010/03/11/7/) reports on a hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that folks concerned about energy security would do well to get smart about.
The piece centers on testimony by John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and a well-respected academic from Harvard. Dr. Holdren was testifying at a hearing on the reauthorization of the America Competes Act. The Competes Act was passed three years ago in response to concerns about the state of America’s investment in science, math and technology education, research and development. Those concerns are still valid today, and have been joined by even more compelling concerns about whether and to what extent America is falling behind in the global competition to deploy energy technologies that enhance energy security while combatting climate change.
The Competes Act is up for reauthorization this year, and may be one of the few pieces of legislation that could garner bipartisan support — particularly since the House champion of the legislation is retiring Science Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN), a moderate Democrat well-liked by his colleagues.
Holdren’s focus was on an area he knows well — R&D for clean energy technologies. And, contrary to the perception of many that the Administration is less than supportive of the private sector, Dr. Holdren made the point that commercializing new energy technology — beginning with basic research through large-scale demonstration and marketplace acceptance — is an activity that must be done in concert with the private sector — not as a part of some centrally-planned and executed government program.
As E&E quotes the testimony:
“When you want to get something into the marketplace, you really need to have folks intimately involved in the market, and nobody understands the market like the private sector,” Holdren said. “You get the benefits of the government’s engagement at the more fundamental and early applied level and the benefits of the private sector’s insights as you’re starting to move toward converting into products.”
That is precisely the right way to look at the research, development, demonstration and deployment continuum. Basic research done at universities and in both private and public sector labs, followed by a mix public and private funding for demonstration and scale-up, plus — where necessary to compensate for externalities of competing, cheaper technologies — deployment incentives that phase out as commercialization takes off.
Dr. Holdren also focused on one of the better ideas to come out of Congress in recent memory, a DOE program authorized by the Competes Act: the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E. ARPA-E is ”an innovative high-risk, high-reward technology development program” that received $400 million in the stimulus bill and for which the Administration has requested $300 million for the Fiscal Year 2011 budget. Early reports from knowledgeable observers suggest that DOE’s leadership of ARPA-E is largely on track.
Perhaps even more important are, as Holdren noted, efforts to “bridge the gap between research and development and innovation.” Dr. Holdren commended DOE for trying to”connect its extensive national lab network to the private sector to move innovation from the labs into the marketplace.” This has been a long-standing goal of DOE, but much more work needs to be done. And while it was not, and is not yet, a focus of the Competes Act, it should be.
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