Posts Tagged by ARPA-E
Renewables — What Are the Economic Realities?
| August 30, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
In response to my white paper on The Tough Realities of Marketing and Sales, a reader points out a few of the economic realities that, in his mind, supersede the points I make in the report. In particular, he notes that there is currently no true market economy for things like biofuels:
All Sustainable businesses have a particular feature: they are always evaluated on a payback or IRR basis. We are in an oil based economy and not on a Sustainable Economy. Biofuels and energy are not marketable by any company but the utilities or distribution companies in each case. You can get biofuels from many technologies, but at the gas station you buy oil, not biofuels. Probably if you look, you will find a huge law on biofuels and how they can be marketed that is everything but compelling for biofuels to be used. Taxes alone make the business tough and customers are wary about using biofuels even in low percentages … Either taxes are on the side of biofuels or they always need incentives and subsidies to be competitive.
The reader goes on to point out that the same lack of liquidity exists for electricity: Read More
More on ARPA-E’s Funding of Clean Energy – from Guest Mike Brace
| October 28, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
Here is guest blogger Mike Brace’s letter to his representative Geoff Davis (R-KY) on the Obama Administration’s choice of projects that received funding in this round under ARPA-E. You’ll notice that he shares the many of the same sentiments that I wrote about yesterday.
Hon. Geoff Davis,
Geoff, I don’t know if you were aware of it but the DoE, ARPA-E has selected their grant recipients for this last round of funding and (to put it bluntly) you, I, the state of Kentucky and almost every American taxpayer got screwed.
If you recall, you wrote a well-versed letter on our behalf to ARPA-E expressing support for our hydrokinetic project, one of which is specifically designed to generate literally millions and millions of kilowatts based on the run-of-river current flow in the Ohio River. We all thought our technology to be a good fit for this ARPA-E grant of which I speak (DE-FOA-0000065) as it was specifically set up to do three things:
• Reduce GHG and Carbon emissions
• Enhance energy security
• Restore science and technology leadership to the private sectors of America.
More specifically, none of this was to be done within the halls of our national federally funded laboratories, it was supposed to wean us off burning fossil fuels over due time, and (most importantly) it was to support technology that creates a lot of jobs and in a timely manner (24 to 36 months). This was spelled out in black and white so to that end we spent a great deal of personal time and money to apply for this grant.
With the exception of about $30M, none of this ARPA-E grant neither funded technology that is even remotely aligned with these goals, or (for the small share that they did fund) they gave the lion’s share to universities, gas/oil/car companies (or to national laboratories) all of which are already very well funded and shouldn’t have to ask for this kind of funding in the first place. It begs to be asked: what have they been doing for the last 20 years if not this?
I have attached the published list of recipients for the $151M that was given out for your review, and you can map out the distributions any number of ways, but I can break it out as follows:
Directly (or indirectly) a lot of the funded was divided up as follows:
• $43M directly to universities (none in KY; and if you think that this amount will create in-so-much-as one additional job in this country think again)
• $27.3M to Gas, Oil or Automotive companies (none in KY)
• $15M to national DoE funded labs (none in KY)
Then, contrary to what they said they wanted to fund, most of the dollars were allocated to the following technologies:
• $41.4M to Biomass fuels/technologies (which has no hope of displacing oil on a national level, still propagates internal combustion engines AND does not burn GHG or Carbon free)
• $33.3M to Advance Battery Technology/Energy Storage (even if it offers any hope of being “transformational” none of them has a prayer of getting out of the lab in 36 months, not a one. And, aren’t we funding these already through other means?)
• $15M to Building Efficiency/Technologies (I can’t help but ask “what’s transformational about that?” And who benefits? The power companies? The consumers? Public rates have never gone down despite the incredible amount of conserving already being done. Who are we helping?)
• $11M to 5 different Carbon Capture projects (not a penny to KY or W VA, and [worst yet] this does nothing to reduce GHG or Carbon emissions, it only makes it worse. In the end it only stashes this problem away for our grandkids to figure out a way to deal with it.)
• $10.2M to Gas/Oil/Automotive companies and their affiliates (didn’t the US Government already give them funds to help them become more ‘transformational’? How did these even get in there?)
Of the $151M handed out, only about $9.0M went to truly transformational technology, through private companies and towards technology that can possibly be mainstreamed in less than 36 months. Sadly, only $21M went to Wind, Solar and Geothermal energy technologies. Besides geothermal energy (which is spotty at best and not very scalable) none of these others can claim the peak performance power generation 24/7/365 that hydropower can. But here is the part I don’t understand: Not a dime went to hydropower or hydrokinetic technologies. Not one dime. (And I know that, besides ours, there were several others on the table worth considering.) We were very dissapointed in that fact.
Geoff, ARPA-E did announce that they will come out with another round of requests for funding proposals and [rest assured] that if we qualify for what they are asking for, we will pursue them as well, so please let this letter serve as a heads-up as a request for further support (if we need it). But, as someone desperately trying to believe in our government, and the choices that it makes for the welfare of its citizens, our group feigns to find anything good to say about this gross misuse of trust in those trying to make America a world leader in clean energy and advanced ‘transformative’ technology. We had so hoped it wasn’t going to turn out as it had. We are upset; you should be too.
A friend,
Mike Brace
Partner, EV World & Assoc, LLC
techeditor@evworld.com
A Disappointing List of Alternative Energy Projects
| October 27, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
I must say that I’m disappointed in this list of clean energy projects that the Obama Administration is funding with its stimulus money under ARPA-E. I use the word disappointed, a considerable understatement, insofar as I promised some of my colleagues that I wouldn’t make a big scene on this issue.
The list seems to contain very little that we were hoping for, and were told that it would feature, i.e., transformative technologies in replacing fossil fuels that would offer near-term results in the real world.
What we see in huge supply are:
Biofuels. This is a poor idea that doesn’t scale well. Even if it were a good way to go, there is no way to create biofuels in sufficient volume to make a meaningful difference in replacing oil. And, as I’ve often asked, why continue to burn hydrocarbons? If we’re going to clean up our processes of generating and consuming energy, why not choose processes that don’t release CO2 and other noxious compounds?
Clean Coal. The processes of sequestering the offending outputs of burning coal are expensive, and riddled with technical issues. Can’t someone stand up to the coal industry and say no to this incredible waste of money and time?
Projects given to government laboratories and universities. Both are known for glacier-like progress through intractable bureaucracies.
What we see little of are the technologies that actually replace fossil fuels and offer the promise of clean energy, like hydrokinetics, solar thermal, geothermal, etc. As I point out in my upcoming book on renewables, there are many fantastic ideas that are already proven within these arenas, the progress of which could be greatly accelerated with funding.
Those of you with naughty kids know what I mean with the term disappointed. Sometimes the best response to misbehavior is not anger; it’s an appeal to a sense of shame. Of course, that implies the possibility of a sense of shame; there are those who say that the corruption in the process is so complete that the perpetrators are incapable of that emotion. I won’t take a stand on that; I simply repeat: Guys, I’m really disappointed in you.
