ARPA-E’s Electrofuels Program has been a wild success…
Time to kill it…
DARPA’s baby cousin, the Energy Department’s ARPA-E, has jump-started a new Green Revolution in its first three years. ARPA-E’s Electrofuels Program has sponsored development of the disruptive, paradigm-changing technology that may yet save us from the worst ravages of global warming, and will dominate industrial society in the future if it is still running.
So, of course, the Electrofuels Program must die.
The scientists and engineers of ARPA-E’s Electrofuels Program believe they are fundamentally changing the world, and the results so far suggest they are right.
So why kill it?
Not to worry… The Electrofuels Program has had a hell of a run, and its death will be a good and glorious thing.
This diary is based primarily on extensive videotaped interviews conducted with ARPA-E’s Eric Toone and most of the lead scientists of the Electrofuels Program for my upcoming documentary “A Most Convenient Convergence.”
The stated intent of the Electrofuels Program is to develop a process that uses renewable energy sources to produce drop-in replacement liquid biofuels at relevant scale and cost, and as the three-year program nears its end, progress can be summarized as follows:
1. The scientists know they can make the biology work. The process uses carbon dioxide as its feedstock and will run on renewable sources of energy.
2. The thirteen teams of scientists and engineers of the Electrofuels Program have growing confidence that it will be possible to use this technology on the scale necessary to replace all liquid fuels in our economy at a cost competitive with the oil industry.
The dramatic success of the first three years of the Electrofuels Program and the profound implications for the environment, national security, and the economy dictate a massive increase in support of this research to speed development of this technology. ARPA-E has the DARPA-proven, flat research agency structure that gave us stealth technology, the internet, and now electrofuels.
While ARPA-E may have a role in the future of electrofuels, based on the results so far, the size of the appropriate investment in this technology going forward is far too big to be administered through ARPA-E.
The processes being developed harness the biological ability of bacteria or other microbes to make everything they need to live using carbon dioxide, water, and energy, along with a few trace minerals. The microbes in the processes are highly engineered; as much of their metabolism as possible is devoted to making the finished product, which can be an alcohol or biodiesel. Other functions of the cell that are not necessary to keep it alive are suppressed, while all functions that help produce fuel are optimized through genetic engineering.
Many of the 13 teams funded by the Electrofuels Program have met their Program benchmarks and will be ready for scale-up to pilot-plant construction at the looming end of the program. The most difficult problem of the process has been identified, and teams using four different approaches to that problem appear to have solved it. The numbers are beginning to suggest that the question is not whether any one of the various approaches will achieve market viability, but rather which one or two will own the market by undercutting gasoline prices in ten years.
And the market for this technology is staggering, far beyond fuel.
When ARPA-E founding Director Arun Majumdjar recently introduced Electrofuels Program performer James Liao of UCLA at a White House ceremony, he predicted that Liao will be considered this century’s Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution who is credited with preventing massive famines as the global population exploded in the 20th century. Majumdar suggested that Liao will get a Nobel Prize for feeding billions even though his work is in Electrofuels.
This may sound strange…”Let them eat diesel?”... but it turns out that if the process can make fuel at a price that matters, it can be tweaked to produce any simple processed commodity from nature, very cheaply. This includes replacements for agricultural staples such as sugar, cooking oil, and animal feed, and feedstocks for the entire petrochemical industry as well as fuel. All will be produced on land not suitable for farming, at a lower cost in both dollars and water resources, and with a relatively tiny carbon footprint, compared to the conventionally produced commodities they replace.
If they pull it off, it really is the next big thing. Really big thing… And it is going really well so far.
The stunning early success of the program places the science in jeopardy of stalling.
The Electrofuels Program set out to provide funding up to a point where venture capital or existing fuel and chemical industry interests jump in. With a 5-7 year pilot-plant construction and testing timeline, the venture capital types are not yet interested, but there is political resistance to funding beyond this point, stated as a reluctance to “pick winners” or pay for “commercialization,” especially within the constraints of ARPA-E’s mission.
Martin Lamonica, writing in an MIT Technology Review article titled “Should the Government Support Applied Research,” nailed a primary reason for ARPA-E’s likely inability to move the science of electrofuels much further:
“While ARPA-E has generated a share of exciting projects, it does have one clear flaw: a lack of end customers. "The big problem that makes energy different from most other startup enterprises is that even if you have something that works great, you probably never amass enough money to commercialize it," says Donald Paul, executive director of the University of Southern California's Energy Institute and former chief technology officer at Chevron.”
This is why the Electrofuels Program must scatter its seeds and die. The results are too good, and the potential payoff too big, to allow the science to wither on the vine, or even to grow slowly on its own as it might in the hands of existing chemical companies. The science and engineering of the Program must receive a massive stream of ongoing funding, through the research arms of several Departments of the US government. The results of the research already completed should be parceled out to many new teams of scientists and engineers, along with the necessary funding to hasten development, and it can and should be done in a manner that includes Lamonica’s “end customers.”
Programs should be initiated in these Departments:
Agriculture. The mini-dust bowl of the last few months raises the question of whether this summer was one of the extremes the AGW model forecasts, or whether it is a suggestion of a new normal. In either case, the increasing likelihood of disruptions in the ability of the nation’s farmers to produce sufficient grain to feed us suggests the creation of the first of two new agencies I propose. The Department of Agriculture should have its own streamlined research agency in the DARPA/ARPA-E model. We’ll call it AARPA, and say it like a pirate, matey. AAAAARPA! The Agricultural Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Its mission will be to develop an ability to produce an emergency food supply in case global warming rapidly craters conventional farming in America, and develop moderate term adaptation strategies for anticipated problems. Among the projects in its initial portfolio, along with other radical ideas from agronomy, will be an Electrofoods Program, which will use the Electrofuels process in place of plants for emergency food production. We won’t call it Soylent Green, but it will taste like chicken.
AARPA should also aggressively pursue a program to develop an Electrofoods platform for cattle, chicken and pig feed.
Research in this area will have a proxy for end customers, the state agricultural universities and colleges throughout the country. They can demonstrate systems locally to facilitate market-driven market penetration, and help distribute the technology rapidly if an emergency develops.
Housing and Urban Development. This Department also gets its own cool new research agency. The infrastructure of this century will include a vast renewable energy collection system, and we already suffer NIMBY disputes over wind and solar projects. HUD research can be instrumental in incorporating the renewable collection apparatus into our lives, and my proposed Urban Advanced Research Projects Agency (UARPA) can bring the flat research agency touch to building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV,) urban wind collection, piezoelectric road surfaces, and how to best incorporate them into the urban future.
The electrofuels concept will be integrated here also, as the electrofuels process allow for storage of all these diffuse urban energy sources as liquid fuel.
UARPA will have a built-in cohort of end customers in state and local governments, which will install systems in and on government property to save money and demonstrate functional and attractive systems to their citizens.
Defense. The Defense Department is, of course, the most reliable end customer. There are two very different projects using electrofuels technology that DARPA and other DOD researchers should address. If the Pentagon becomes convinced these projects can work, it will want them very badly.
The small-scale project would combine an electrofuels process with a Makani Power flying electrical generator to provide the fuel and electricity needs of remote forward bases, and possibly forward fuel depots if paired with carbon-air capture technology. The end customer here might be the Marine Corps, represented by some really smart and intense Marine Lt. Colonel with an engineering background attached to DARPA who understands that successful development means fewer of his grunts come home in body bags because they were escorting fuel trucks around a combat zone. That is a guy I want championing this technology; he’ll get it done.
The other project goes big. Nuclear-powered aircraft carriers hardly ever tax the output of their reactors. Navy researchers can investigate the possibility of using the excess generating capacity of a carrier’s nuclear power plant to supply the fuel needs of its air wing, and possibly fuel its escorts. This system would require the development and use of carbon air capture technology. The primary problem with carbon air capture is the high energy use, which is not a problem for an end customer sitting on an under-utilized nuclear reactor. The end customer here is a Navy Admiral who gets to rewrite the book on exerting naval influence around the world because the most important item in the logistics chain will now be produced on the fly. When he retires, he can write the book about how the Navy research he ran rearranged the world economy.
Energy. ARPA-E and the DOE National Laboratories should not get shut out of the action, even without clear end customers. Perhaps the next generation of ARPA-E’s Electrofuels Program should be directed at developing niche applications including small scale, and systems optimized to pair with emerging renewable energy collection systems.
Unless this technology falls on its face, it is the future of industry. In that future, industrial man can profitably become a net consumer of carbon dioxide.
Spreading the work of developing Electrofuels among the research arms of multiple US government departments will spur synergy and competition, facilitating the transition into the private market.
So, the Electrofuels Program must die, that its progeny may quickly inherit the earth.