The U.S. Department of Energy will pump $151 million into 37 innovative energy-related research projects through a new federal agency modeled after the Defense Department program that helped commercialize microchips and the Internet.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or Arpa-e, created in 2007 to support innovative and often-experimental projects, selected the first round of grant recipients from 3,600 proposals.

While many of the ideas may never lead to practical breakthroughs, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said some could have a “transformative impact.”

Among the first grant recipients are University of Minnesota researchers attempting to develop an organism that uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide to sugars and diesel fuel; a Massachusetts Institute of Technology team developing an all-liquid metal battery that could better manage the output from intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar; and a United Technologies effort to capture carbon emissions from power plant stacks using enzymes.

The agency — which will target research projects by small business, universities, and corporations — will be led by Arun Majumdar, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

Article appearing courtesy of Yale Environment 360

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Clean technology and energy efficiency leaders from Google, the California Public Utilities Commission, McKinsey, the DOE, Kleiner Perkins, and many other green tech folks, will get together on May 20-21 at the inaugural Santa Barbara Summit on Energy Efficiency. The event is organized by UCSB’s Institute for Energy Efficiency and will explore the pipeline of new efficiency technologies as well as the current business, economic, and policy landscape and the obstacles and opportunities it presents. Preregistration has closed, but you can attend by registering at Corwin Pavilion at UC Santa Barbara, where the event is taking place.

If you can’t participate in person, you still have the chance to attend part of the program: There will be a live Webcast of a town hall meeting event on Thursday, May 21 at 11:00 am PDT (2:00 pm EDT). The 75-minute interactive panel discussion “Policy and Technology: Conflict or Synergy?” will feature:

• Randy Komisar, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
• Arun Majumdar, director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• J. Michael McQuade, senior vice president for science and technology at United Technologies

The event will be moderated by Forrest Sawyer, Emmy Award-winning former ABC, NBC and MSNBC news anchor. You can attend live at http://iee.ucsb.edu/sbsee

Submit your questions for the panelists:
The Institute for Energy Efficiency invites you to submit your questions for the panelists by writing to whitney (at) iee.ucsb.edu. Forrest Sawyer will read the names, affiliations, and locations of selected submitters.

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