[科技动态]美国能源部ARPA-E项目取得任何进步了吗?

特邀撰稿人：宝财

【麻省理工评论网站2015年7月15日消息】美国政府正在新能源思想上投资，又取得了多少进步呢？

作者：Kristin Majcher

2009年，奥巴马总统启动了一项名为ARPA-E的新能源项目（简介附后），其资金来源于美国复苏与投资法案。该项目以国防高级研究计划局（DARPA）为模板，旨在协助研发那些投资人或其他政府机构可将其引入市场的高风险能源技术。本文就该项目目前情况予以介绍。

稳定的投资

自6年前得到最初4亿美元投资开始，除2010年以外，项目已经实现了在每财年9月份之前投资金额达到1.8亿至2.8亿美元。ARPA-E前两年已经接收了2.8亿美元，白宫要求国会在2016年将投资增加到3.25亿美元。但有可能最终金额要少一些。如果当前的预算法案得以通过，同过去两年相比，ARPA-E有望接收等量或略高的投资数。

到2月份，ARPA-E已经在400多个项目中投入约11亿美元，许多与23个特殊技术研发有关，例如，能量存储和生产钛这样的金属的节能技术。

一些对ARPA-E预算的争议，以及对能量研究和发展整体投资，都应增加。包括比尔盖茨和通用电子CEO杰佛里艾美特在内的CEO组织——美国能源创新委员会2月份上报报告中指出，对ARPA-E的投资每年应接近10亿美元，不能少于3亿美元。

去年12月上任的ARPA-E主管威廉姆斯艾伦表示，由于是许多不同的项目单位组成，ARPA-E可以按照投资级别调整投资活动。她表示，“我认为我们已经在投资广度和深度中找到了平衡，早期我们大量投资在广度上，对深度的投资使得我们可以选出一些特别成功的项目，并驱动他们继续前行”，“依据我们的投资级别，我们不断使广度和深度达到最优化，这对我们的管理带来了挑战”。

商业成功

一些技术已经进入市场。威廉姆斯指出，亚利桑那州立大学校办Fluidic Energy公司就是一个例子。该项目在2010年从ARPA-E中接受了300万美元来为输电网级别的能量存储研发可充电金属空气电池系统。威廉姆斯表示，该公司发现其第一个市场在海外，在一些缺乏可靠供电的国家，基站可以使用其电池作为现场电池储备。ARPA-E另一个成功项目就是1366 technologies公司，该麻省理工学院校办公司在2008年开始时就接收了7000万美元投资。该公司2009年又接收了400万美元研发更便宜的硅晶片。

但并非所有项目都能成功。在某些案例中，ARPA-E将对某些不达标或不能实施的项目不再提供资金。其网站中，23个项目划归到“取消”类别中。一个公司已经破产，包括电池生产商Envia，尽管2011年还完成了将近400万美元的投资。

她表示，“我们正通过一些不同方式确认项目成功与否，包括从现有项目商业化途径，而且，我们还注意到了事实，那就是在许多案例中，我们的技术是开创性的，能感觉到他们正在开创完全不同的方式看待问题”。

新技术

尽管ARPA-E对投资人和消费者来说更集中在更加成熟的前沿技术上，但其仍对一些新技术保持敏感。ARPA-E有代表性的召开工业巨头和研究人员研讨会来讨论是否一个新技术可行，然后决定是否对该项目投资。最近，ARPA-E花费了1.1亿多美元对几十个新项目投资，主要集中在发电，建立更好的方法来分析植物遗传组成，以及产生聚变能的新理论。

（本文由宝财译自麻省理工评论网站，感谢宝财的辛勤劳动！）

ARPA-E简介：

2005年，美国国会委托国家科学院分析“美国在保持关键技术领域领先地位上所面临的最迫切挑战”。美国国家科学院在由此提交的《在风暴之上崛起：开创美国经济的光明未来》报告中表达了对于美国经济和技术竞争力现状的担忧。出于对颠覆性创新、具变革意义和潜在巨大应用价值的高风险能源研究的激励和开发清洁、低廉与可靠能源的强烈需求，该报告建议布什政府仿效国防部高级研究计划局（DARPA）的成功模式在能源部（DOE）设立ARPA-E，借此推动革命性能源技术的开发。2007年美国国会通过、布什总统签署生效的《美国竞争力法案》即授权DOE创建ARPA-E，以立法形式明确了机构使命、职责、人员权责利，使得有法可依，避免了政府换届产生的不确定性。2009年《美国经济复苏与再投资法案》专门为ARPA-E拨款4亿美元正式开展工作。截至2014年9月，ARPA-E已为19项主题领域研究计划和2轮开放式申请下的375个项目资助了超过10亿美元。（本段文字来源于中国科学报，作者为陈伟 张军）

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原文链接：

Is ARPA-E Making Any Progress?

The U.S. government is investing in new energy ideas, so how much progress has it made?

By Kristin Majcher on July 15, 2015

In 2009, President Obama started a new energy program called ARPA-E with funds from the American Recovery and Investment Act. The program, modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is designed to help develop high-risk energy technologies to the point where investors or other government agencies can bring them to market. Here’s a look at the program’s progress so far.

Steady funding

Since getting an initial $400 million six years ago, the program has received somewhere between $180 and $280 million each fiscal year ending in September, except for 2010. ARPA-E has received $280 million in the past two fiscal years, and the White House asked Congress to boost that to $325 in 2016. However, it appears that the final amount will be less than that. If current budget bills go forward, ARPA-E would receive equal or slightly higher amounts of funding compared to the past two years.

As of February, ARPA-E had invested about $1.1 billion in more than 400 projects, many of which are tied to 23 programs focused on developing specific technologies, such as energy storage and reducing the energy needed to produce metals like titanium. Each project typically lasts two or three years and might receive anywhere from a few thousand to several million dollars.

Some argue that ARPA-E’s budget, as well as energy research and development dollars in general, should be increased. The American Energy Innovation Council, a group of CEOs including Bill Gates and General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, recommended in a February report that ARPA-E funding should be closer to $1 billion per year, and no less than $300 million.

ARPA-E is able to tailor its activities to its funding level because it is made up of many different program units, says Ellen Williams, ARPA-E’s director since last December. “I think that we see a balance between portfolio breadth—and early on we had a huge amount of portfolio breadth—and portfolio depth, in terms of being able to pick out some particularly successful projects and drive them forward harder,” she says. “Depending on what our funding level is, we’re constantly going to be doing that optimization between breadth and depth. And that’s part of the challenge of managing technology.”

Commercial success

Some technologies are already making their way into the market. Williams points to Arizona State University spin-out Fluidic Energy as an example. It received $3 million from ARPA-E in 2010 to develop a rechargeable metal air battery system for energy storage at the grid level. The company has found its first market overseas to use its batteries for on-site battery storage for cell towers in countries that lack reliable electricity, says Williams. Another successful ARPA-E alum is 1366 Technologies, an MIT spin-out company that has raised nearly $70 million since it started in 2008 (see “Solar Survivor”). That company received $4 million from the agency in 2009 to develop cheaper silicon wafers.

But not all projects are a success. In some cases, ARPA-E will cut funding for certain projects that don’t meet criteria or aren’t working. Twenty-three projects are classified as “canceled” on its website. Some companies have gone out of business, including battery manufacturer Envia (see “Why We Don’t Have Battery Breakthroughs”), despite completing a nearly $4 million project under the agency in 2011.

“We’re defining success in a lot of different ways, both in terms of the path towards commercialization of an existing project and also paying attention to the fact that, in many cases, our technologies are groundbreaking in the sense that they’re opening up a totally different way of looking at problems,” she says. “Even if the project itself doesn’t line up in a commercial product, we then are starting to look at where its impacts are in terms of other technical developments.”

New technologies

Even though ARPA-E is focusing more on handing off technologies to investors or customers now that the projects are more mature, it still has its ear to the ground for new technologies. The agency typically holds a workshop full of industry heads and researchers to discuss whether a new technology is feasible, and then decides whether to award funding for projects. It recently spent more than $110 million in funding for dozens of new projects focused on generating power, creating better ways to analyze the genetic makeup of plants and even new methods to produce fusion power.