3 Questions: ARPA-E chief on the energy challenge
During a visit on Wednesday to MIT, Arun Majumdar, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), discussed the global energy challenge and the role his agency plays in trying to foster transformational energy research and development. Majumdar’s presentation to a standing-room-only crowd in Bartos Theater served as both a wake-up call (the U.S. spends more on dog-food R&D than it does on electrical-power R&D, he noted) and a source of inspiration (Majumdar discussed some of the very real and exciting energy projects his agency is funding, including several here at MIT). After the event, which was sponsored by the MIT Energy Initiative, MIT News asked Majumdar about a surprising new proposal for federal energy-research spending out this week and whether U.S. federal spending should focus more on creating incentives for the adoption and implementation of existing clean-energy technologies and less on basic research.Q....