Editorial comment

	Vol. 230 No.8
PERRY A. FISCHER, EDITOR

It works well on paper and in testing—Revolutionary energy projects require a completely different kind of management

Assuming that the title is correct, why is it that revolutionary energy technologies take so many years, often several decades, to reach significant market levels—indeed, assuming they ever get implemented—as opposed to evolutionary technology? There’s a new idea that it’s the management of new ideas that is the root of the problem.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) is a new agency authorized by Congress in 2007 to sponsor transformational research to help the US improve its energy security and combat climate change. Its creation was recommended by the US National Academy of Sciences in 2005. ARPA-E was funded at $400 million as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and is modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA, as you might recall, is that weird agency that specializes in thinking so far outside the box that it must be from another planet.

While DARPA does come up with some wild, even bizarre ideas, more importantly, the agency brings solutions to realization. Most ideas that they have worked on fail, such as a mechanical elephant for the jungles of Vietnam and telepathy research for winning wars. But their achievements are equally striking, such as the stealth bomber, unmanned aircraft and the Internet. 

A report by Clean Air−Cool Planet—a left-leaning organization insofar as they believe that global warming is real and professional wrestling is fake—details the opportunities and challenges facing the new agency in ARPA-E: An Energy Future Transformed. It was authored by Dr. Jane A. Alexander, a former deputy director of DARPA and the first deputy director of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA). The report details how ARPA-E can identify technologies with major potential and move them beyond the “Valley of Death” that exists between technology discovery and industry uptake with a path to market.

In transformational R&D, the improvements and combined performance aspects of the technology must reach a threshold of maturity at which industry believes the risks are manageable to complete the R&D. This is one key reason why a new approach is needed.

The report states that another essential ingredient is “a multi-year budget that must be established from the beginning and protected. Once a program is started, any external budget disruptions will consume much of a program manager’s time in the unnecessary replanning of all the interacting aspects of the program.” This is a common flaw of most government-run programs.

Because transformational R&D programs are so different from evolutionary R&D, there needs to be a different set of people to manage these programs, different processes to create and govern them, and different organizational structures to support them.

In a general way, the central idea of most of my editorials has been to inform readers that there are many ways to produce, store and use energy. Over the years, on the oil and gas side, I’ve discussed how CO₂ floods could, at a minimum, add 89 billion bbl of recoverable oil in the US alone, perhaps four times that amount using the best CO₂ technologies being developed. On natural gas, you’ve read that there is ongoing research into converting coal seams and unrecoverable residual oil left in oil fields into methane by injecting methanogens into them. These microbes eat carbon and excrete methane, thereby transforming wells into long-term gas producers.

I’ve often discussed my dislike of food-based biofuels, because their net benefit is too close to their net detriment, and because in most countries, especially the US, it is simply vote buying. However, cellulosic ethanol—if its cost can be brought down—has better inputs than its starchy cousin.

And algae, while still not commercial at today’s prices, has the production potential to far surpass agriculture-based fuels. It is worth noting that the above three biotechnologies (methanogen-produced gas, cellulosic ethanol and algae) will all benefit from genetic engineering—something that we are continually getting better at.

Solar-electric generation has become possible on a stand-alone, profitable basis (provided that it is made and sold during peak hours), such as concentrated-sunlight projects now being built in the US southwestern desert, some potentially as large as a nuclear power plant.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) still needs a deep pocket, but the engineering challenges are mostly just matters of scale, owing to the large amount of deep water that must be moved.

Wind is the most ubiquitous energy source on Earth. It can be found at all latitudes, day or night. Several years of double-digit growth rates suggests that wind will provide 20% of the industrialized world’s power supply, probably in the next 20 years.

Energy storage will continue to see a lot of investment. Pumped water remains the king of energy storage, but flow batteries continue in their development, as do all devices that tend to improve the quality and reliability of variable energy, such as flywheels and super-capacitors.

Finally, I’ve been disappointed to see all of the exciting fourth- and fifth-generation nuclear fission plants being seriously developed only by Japan and China. The US seems to be enamored with the status quo, preferring to extend the license of old plants way beyond their original 35-year permits, while licensing new nuclear plants of very similar design to the ones they will replace.

And of course, cold fusion has resurfaced. Recall that DARPA said there is “no doubt that anomalous excess heat is produced in these experiments.”

So, would having a management structure similar to DARPA’s mean that some of the above technologies would be further along than is now the case?  Probably, so it’s worth pursuing. But it’s also worth remembering that the “D” in DARPA stands for defense. When it comes to ever-more efficient ways to kill people, even radical technology gets funded and hurried along.

Of one thing I’m certain: We can have an abundant energy future if we can just manage the transitions, despite the political, social and economic constraints that insist on business as usual.