Trump 'Just Not Correct' About ARPA-E's Function, Says Former Director Of Slashed Agency

The Trump Administration's budget blueprint is "just not correct" about the function of ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, its former director said Monday afternoon.
Trump's "America First: A Blueprint to Make America Great Again" eliminates all funding for ARPA-E and a similar agency for vehicle technology "because the private sector is better positioned to finance disruptive energy research and development and to commercialize innovative technologies."
But ARPA-E was created just for stages of research and development that the private sector does not finance, said Ellen Williams, the agency's director from 2014 until January.
"I will just say that from all my experience both in the private sector and in ARPE-E that this is just not correct," said Williams, a chemist who previously served as chief scientist for British Petroleum.
"That’s not what ARPA-E does," Williams said. "ARPA-E does not compete at a stage at which the private sector does R&D. ARPA-E is looking far-too-early stage at technologies that are very high risk and allowing those technologies to compete kind of on an even playing field to move themselves forward on a pathway toward commercial assessment, allowing them—at the end of a finite period of funding—to reach the point where it’s possible to make an assessment about their potential to scale up and manufacturing and their potential for moving forward for commercialization."
Once technologies develop to the point the private sector may take interest in them, ARPA-E bows out, she said:
"ARPA-E then does not continue to fund those teams but basically graduates them, if you want to be polite, or kicks them out the door if you want to be cool, and says, move on!"
The agency was founded in 2009 as part of President Obama's stimulus, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, with a $400 million initial budget for 2010. It received $180 million in 2011, $275 million in 2012, $251 million in 2013, and $280 million in both 2014 and 2015.
The agency has invested about $1.5 billion in new energy technologies over the eight years of the Obama Administration, and it announced last month that teams graduating from ARPA-E have raised $1.8 billion in follow-on investment funds from the private sector to commercialize their technologies.
Williams's comments came during a forum on "Identifying Opportunities for Progress on Energy and Climate Policy" sponsored by the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project and the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago. Moderator John Deutch, an institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, asked Williams about the Trump budget and then said "If the United States does not have a pretty healthy ARPA-E program, we don't have a sound energy-research and development program."
The elimination of ARPA-E is part of a $1.7 billion cut to the Department of Energy's $28 billion budget. One DOE agency saw its budget increase. The Trump blueprint proposes a $1.4 billion increase for the National Nuclear Security Administration to "strengthen the Nation’s nuclear capability."