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ARPA-E

Agency of the U.S. Energy Department

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The program directors at ARPA-E serve limited terms, in an effort to reduce bureaucracy and bias. Since September 2025, the director is Conner Prochaska.

History and mission

Legislative history

ARPA-E was initially conceived by a report by the National Academies entitled Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. The report described a need for the US to stimulate innovation and develop clean, affordable, and reliable energy. ARPA-E was officially created by the America COMPETES Act , authored by Congressman Bart Gordon, within the United States Department of Energy (DOE) in 2007, though without a budget. The initial budget of about $400 million was a part of the economic stimulus bill of February 2009. In early January 2011, the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 made additional changes to ARPA-E's structure; this structure is codified in Title 42, Chapter 149, Subchapter XVII, § 16538 of the United States Code.

Among its main provisions, Section 16538 provides that ARPA-E shall achieve its goals through energy technology projects by doing the following:

  1. Identifying and promoting revolutionary advances in fundamental and applied sciences;
  2. Translating scientific discoveries and cutting-edge inventions into technological innovations; and
  3. Accelerating transformational technological advances in areas that industry by itself is not likely to undertake because of technical and financial uncertainty.

Mission

Like DARPA does for military technology, ARPA-E is intended to fund high-risk, high-reward research involving government labs, private industry, and universities that might not otherwise be pursued. ARPA-E has four objectives:

  1. To bring a freshness, excitement, and sense of mission to energy research that will attract the U.S.'s best and brightest minds;
  2. To focus on creative, transformation energy research that the industry cannot, or will not support due to its high risk, but that has high reward potential;
  3. To utilize an ARPA-like organization that is flat, nimble, and sparse, capable of sustaining for long periods of time those projects whose promise remains real, while phasing out programs that do not prove to be as promising as anticipated; and
  4. To create a new tool to bridge the gap between basic energy research and development/industrial innovation.

Launch

ARPA-E was created as part of the America COMPETES act signed by President George W. Bush in August 2007. President Barack Obama announced the launch of ARPA-E on April 27, 2009 as part of an announcement about federal investment in research and development and science education. Soon after its launch, ARPA-E released its first Funding Opportunity Announcement, offering $151 million in total with individual awards ranging from $500,000 to $9 million. Applicants submitted eight-page "concept papers" that outlined the technical concept; some were invited to submit full applications.

Arun Majumdar, former deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was appointed the first director of ARPA-E in September 2009, over six months after the organization was first funded. U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu presided over the inaugural ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit on March 1–3, 2010 in Washington, D.C.

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