Power Up

President Obama noted today his administration will fund an organization called Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy or ARPA-E, which is modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Congress created ARPA-E a couple of years ago, but the Bush administration never funded it.

This morning at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, Obama said DARPA -- which was created during the Eisenhower administration in response to Sputnik -- has been charged throughout its history with conducting high-risk, high-reward research on projects such as the precursor to the Internet, known as ARPANET; stealth technology; and the Global Positioning System.

"All owe a debt to the work of DARPA," Obama said. "So ARPA-E seeks to do the same kind of high-risk/high-reward research."

Last month, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the House Science and Technology Committee that ARPA-E will "identify technologies with potential to become the next generation of revolutionary energy systems and products while it will make a major impact on our twin problems of energy security and climate change."

Chu said he was pushing to get ARPA-E up and running soon. When advisers told him it would take one year, he instructed them to revisit the issue and see why it would take so long. "There might be regulations, things like that," he said. "And I have not gotten back the answer to that. So I hope it would take much shorter than one year."