Congressional Research Service via OpenCRS
http://opencrs.cdt.org/document/RL34497
“Modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) within DOE, passed by Congress as part of the America COMPETES Act would support transformational energy technology research projects with the goal of enhancing the nation’s economic and energy security. Proponents of ARPA-E contend that additional science and technology would help respond to the nation’s need for clean, affordable, and reliable energy. Opponents question whether ARPA-E is necessary to develop new technologies, when existing energy technologies are not fully utilized due to insufficient policies to encourage their implementation. ARPA-E proponents counter that ARPA-E is needed to catalyze the energy marketplace by accelerating research that will bridge the gap between basic research and industrial product development. The Bush Administration questions whether the DARPA model can be used for the energy sector and is concerned that it might redirect funds away from current DOE research activities, particularly the DOE Office of Science. Instead, the President’s FY2009 budget requests funding for six new technology transfer collaborations…Budget constraints may present Congress with a dilemma: which is more important, existing DOE energy R&D activities or ARPA-E? An alternative is to incorporate some ARPA-E or another research management model, such as the CIA’s In-Q-Tel venture capital activity, into existing DOE programs.
“Some have proposed funding ARPA-E through a mechanism that differs from the usual single-year appropriations process to enhance its ability to conduct risky research without being subject to the annual appropriations cycle, political and financial pressures, and resource fluctuations that might stifle innovation. One option is for Congress to provide a multi-year advance appropriation. Another is for Congress to identify a revenue source. For example, some have suggested that ARPA-E could be funded by a repeal of oil industry tax and other incentives (to offset ARPA-E’s cost); gasoline tax; oil company profit tax; a trust fund set up from federal oil and gas royalties, or from a fund derived under a climate change cap and trade program. Based on past experience, however, each of these proposals would face challenges in Congress.” (Docuticker)
It would seem that part of this might be answered by finding out how DOD/DARPA has done it. ie, how, for 50 years now, has DARPA managed to survive as an essentially independent entity inside DOD that has never had its budget raided by anyone else? DOD is an even bigger – an older – bureaucracy than DOE; perhaps whatever methodology has been used to ‘protect’ DARPA might work also for ARPA-E.
Another thing that would help to differentiate ARPA-E – which helps justify it’s existence – is to point to things that it might do that would never get done otherwise by the current entrenched DOE bureaucracy. (That is, in fact, how DARPA decides nowadays whether to start a project; it has to be ‘DARPA-Hard’; meaning, impossible enough that no one else is seriously attempting to demonstrate it. Otherwise, they aren’t interested).
One example of “ARPA-E Hard”: Alternative fusion technologies. I am not the only government engineer who is less than believing in the one, single fusion technology that the US (and other countries) are working on. It is not only overly complicated and expensive, but also produces in the end radioactive waste, which will limit its utility. There are other potential fusion technologies which have been tested on a small scale already – for example, different types of a-neutronic fusion, which would create no radioactive waste in the end and result in smaller reactors. Demonstrating one or more of these could change the world as we know it – and may be possible with only tens of hundreds of millions of dollars (as opposed to the $18b, and climbing, spent on ‘normal’ fusion). That’s the type of thing that, if ARPA-E doesn’t try it, no one would. It’s the type of thing a DARPA for Energy would try. And, should.
According to Albert Einstein, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” We need to think outside the box.
United States can achieve Energy Independence by upgrading fossil power plants to “Mirror Power” plants that are three times more efficient and use extra power to produce electricity and hydrogen for over 200 million motor vehicles. The $400 billion/year, which America spends on importing 4 billion barrels of oil, can finance the “Mirror Power” plants, infrastructure, and create over 20 million American jobs.
“Mirror Energy” is an alternative source of energy that can supply the World’s energy needs for billions of years and comes from the conversion of matter into energy according to Einstein’s equation: E = mc2. Over $500 billion has been spent on researching and developing the technology during the last 75 years.
If government, business and educational leaders can work collegiately together, America can achieve Energy Independence in 15 years. Now is the time to generating power to replace fossil fuels rather than create another government agency. For more information, please visit http://www.EnergyUSA.net.
This “mirror energy” is a fantasy. Due to the extreme scarcity of antimatter in the entire universe, one cannot use it as a fuel like that. In order to make antimatter (which is done in high energy labs all the time) one needs far more energy than one would get back from the annihilation. The second law of thermodynamics makes it impossible to use antimatter without a huge energy COST. Antimatter fuel might be good for space travel in the future, but production would come at a very high energy cost. One could propose all sorts of fantastic methods of production, like using zero-point energy and vacuum fluctuation – particle pair production, but this runs into a version of the second law resulting from the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics. It is a fantasy to think that the second law is violated like this, especially since Hawking’s partial unification of quantum fields in curved spacetime. Even blackholes must obey the second law!
Mirror Energy is reality. There are 3 energy sources: Kinetic, Potential, and Mirror Energy. Mirror Energy is produced according to Einstein’s equation: E = mc2. The second law resulting from uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics has not been volated.
Comets are natural sources of antimatter or mirror matter. One of the hundreds of comets could supply the World’s entire energy needs for billions of years.
The quality of antimatter in comets is a million times less than theorized in the Big Bang Model. The announcement was made at the joint meeting of America Physical Society and American Astronomical Society. The cost of harvesting mirror matter from comets is significantly less than the cost of making antimatter.
United States can achieve Energy Independence by upgrading fossil power plants to “Mirror Power” plants that are three times more efficient and use extra power to produce electricity and hydrogen for over 200 million motor vehicles. For more information, please visit http://www.EnergyUSA.net.
Pingback: EarthSystemScience » Nobel Prize winner to head Department of Energy
good luck getting antimatter from comets and bringing back to earth, then finding a way to turn the gamma rays into electrical energy…its a nice thought.
A much easier way to create the worlds energy is to bring back He-3 from the moons surface, and doing a-neutronic fusion with that.
-ryan
antimatter physicist