arpa-e 2016 notes part 1

Having spent six days traveling to, attending, and returning from arpa-e 2016, it's time to start chronicling some of my thoughts. At the broadest level, the summit was very well attended, much better than last year. As is typical, the demographic was predominately male, predominately Caucasian with a significant sprinkling of Indian (subcontinent type) as well as Asian attendees. There were extremely few African Americans and other "people of color" and a relatively small population of women.

It was stated by Katie Fehrenbacher, a senior writer at Fortune Magazine who focuses on energy and technology, that, at her first arpa-e summit attendance in 2010, there were many VCs (venture capitalists) whereas, in 2016, "not so much." The decline in funding for clean energy startup ventures that her comment implies has been well documented elsewhere.

Chart courtesy of: PwC.com

I'm not an expert investor but, as I implied in one of my posts on LightSail Energy and stated in my post regarding Bell Laboratories, today's investors' demands for quick returns on their investment are anathema to ventures that develop over periods of many years and require huge capital investments. Further there have been well-publicized failures of some large cleantech startups, e.g., Solyndra, Range Fuels, KiOR, A123, etc. Cleantech is HARD!

While at the opening session, I drew a little diagram on my Samsung Galaxy Note 4, a phone on which one can legitimately take handwritten notes and make such sketches. Here's the sketch I made: 

I'll concede that it's cryptic and hard to read but the idea is that the U.S. funds entrepreneurial innovations that lead to development in such a way that private equity of one sort or another sees the potential and ponies up sufficient funding to take the innovation to market. To date, arpa-e funded ventures have attracted $1.25B in private funding. To do so, it has provided $1.3B to some 475 projects. I'm unable, however, to find an arpa-e funded venture that has individually gone to market, though at least four have been purchased by large companies as of FY 2014.

I'll provide further input over the next few posts (perhaps interspersed with other topics) but I want to say that that $350M per year funding level for something as important as the goals of arpa-e is a pittance, especially in comparison to the scale of the problem. There are those who say government should stay out of such ventures and ask "what good has government investment ever done?" I'd point out Boulder (now Hoover) dam, Tennessee Valley Authority, Rural Electrification Administration, ARPANET, etc.

Off to arpe-a 2016

Image credit: arpe-e

I'm rather shocked to find that this is the sixth (!) arpa-e energy innovation summit that I've attended. I intend to blog about my adventures here and, in particular, about some of the energy storage sessions as it's my considered opinion that storage breakthroughs are key to a sustainable energy future.

But for this post, I'm going to discuss getting to Washington, DC. I used three modes of transportation: my (new) Jeep SRT Grand Cherokee (with apologies to commenters who had suggestions for my avoidance of such a joule hog) to KSNA, i.e., John Wayne Airport; two legs of air carrier transport (KORD, O'Hare Airport was a layover); and a SuperShuttle van from DCA, i.e., Reagan National Airport to the Gaylord National Harbor Resort.

The trip to KSNA was about 18 miles, the Jeep is currently displaying an average mileage of about 15.5 m.p.g. (as stated in my previous post, I'm not driving for economy) so I burned about 1.16 gallons of premium fuel, thereby converting something like 137,000,000 joules of chemical energy to thermal energy to turn the wheels, move air out of the way, heat the atmosphere, etc. Therefore, I my rate of energy use in "joules/(passenger*meter) was about 4,730.

The leg from KSNA to KORD was in a United Airlines Boeing 737-724 aircraft featuring two CFM International CFM56 turbofan engines (of the "dash 7B24" variety). These engines are rated at 24,200 pounds thrust each. It's not easy to estimate the fuel burn for airline flights, I wish that I'd remembered to ask the Captain or First Officer, they're very cooperative to sharing such data. But, as best I can estimate, we burned around 18,000 pounds or 8,165 kilograms of fuel (fuel calculations for airplanes are typically done in pounds since aircraft weight enters into literally every aspect of every maneuver and operation) to take 118 passengers 1,818 statute miles. A kilogram of jet A fuel releases 43.5 megajoules of energy upon oxidation, and so we converted 3.55*10^11 joules of thermal energy. The plane carried its full complement of 118 passengers, and so the energy use in "joules/(passenger*meter) was about 1,040. Of the 3.55*10^11 joules converted, I was responsible for about 3 billion of 'em.

I'll spare my patient readers the detail of the KORD to KDCA leg on an Embraer 175 regional jet. I estimate that we converted 1.14*10^11 joules traveling 650 miles. This works out to about 1430 (joules/passenger*meter) for the 76 passengers on board. My allocation was about 1.5 billion of those joules.

Finally, I rode a SuperShuttle van for the approximately eight miles to complete the journey. I estimate that it burned about 0.5 gallons and converted 42,800,000 joules of chemical energy to thermal over the eight miles. My rate of energy use was thus about 3,320 joules/(passenger*meter).

My grand total of turning the energy in chemical bonds to thermal energy in the atmosphere

Image credit: PowersaveSchools.org

(and a very small amount in ground) was 4.68 billion joules. Of these, 4.5 billion or about 96% were in aircraft (I can't say "in the air" because we did taxi). But note that, of the 2,495 miles traveled, 99% were in the air. Thus, purely in terms of energy conversion, the air travel was quite efficient in comparison to ground transport. Of course, I was the solo passenger in my vehicle as I was (surprisingly) in the van, and having several passengers would change the joules/(passenger*mile) metric significantly. And, as some will no doubt point out, so would staying home.

And, so I understand (not having read enough to know why), hydrocarbons oxidized in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere are much more damaging than those oxidized on the ground.

I'll be responsible for more joules and a greater rate of conversion when I return to Southern California on Thursday, since we'll be flying against the prevailing winds. For a round number, I'll add 20% to the eastbound total for 10.3 billion joules. It is to be hoped that I'll learn enough here to be able to participate in saving many times that number, at least, that is, from the burning of fossil fuels.

Addendum: Perhaps 10.3 billion joules has little meaning for some. This is about 2,860 kilowatt hours. The average US home uses about 2,733 kilowatt hours of electrical energy in three months.

Misallocation

A couple of things will come as no surprise to my regular readers. The first is that I consider myself to be a true conservative and that the foolishness, hypocrisy, obstructionism, and fact-free opining that passes for conservative commentary today is a source of deep embarrassment to me. The second is that I consider the ability to ensure a reliable and sustainable supply of primary energy to be one of, if not the, greatest and most important challenges we face not only in our nation but in the world (the other possibilities include "peak everything" and self-poisoning of our species, the latter including pollution of all types, CO2 emissions, etc.).

Thus, it is deeply disappointing, though not particularly surprising, that the full House Appropriations Committee approved along party lines, a bill with deep cuts to renewable energy projects and, particularly, to arpa-e, an organization whose annual "Energy Innovation Summit" I've attended the last three years. The $30.4B bill is $2.9B below the 2013 level and $700M below the sequestration level. arpa-e, in particular, received a cut from $252M to $50M, a reduction of 80.8%. This is tantamount to the committee saying "we don't want arpa-e." President Obama (of whom I'm certainly no fan) requested $379M. You can read the committee's press release here.

arpa-e is engaged in funding of high risk, high reward projects in the energy field and funds technologies from fuels and generation to storage to distribution to control, as well as carbon capture, efficiency in buildings, transportation technologies, and many others. Can anyone deny that these technologies constitute the way forward in a coming (if not here already) time of energy limits?

Energy Subcommittee Chairman Rodney Frelinguysen (R-N.J.) was quoted as saying "It is our job to make do with what we have, not with what we hope to have." I wonder where the money could possibly be found?