If there’s a program within the Energy Department’s sprawling bureaucracy that lawmakers love, chances are it’s the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy.Yes, what a great victory, to have the program cut by a mere 40 percent. Here's the thing: in Washington, $300 million is nothing. Peanuts. Bupkis. It's less than one one-hundredth of one percent of the federal budget. And for that small investment, we might just find technologies that will produce dramatically cheaper batteries to power electric cars, or more efficient solar cells, or who knows what else. But hey, what's eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels compared to cutting one one-hundredth of one percent of the budget? It's almost as though some people don't want the US government to achieve great things.But its popularity on and off Capitol Hill doesn’t guarantee the future success for ARPA-E — the program designed to support radical new energy technologies — in the tussle over the federal budget and debt…
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee approved a budget to cut ARPA-E's funding to $100 million, marking the latest stop in the energy spending roller coaster.
The continuing resolution the House passed in February to cover the remainder of fiscal 2011 left ARPA-E hanging by a thread. The bill proposed paring the program’s budget down to $50 million — roughly 87 percent below the amount it got from the economic stimulus bill and well below the $300 million DOE requested for 2011.
When the final budget compromise left ARPA-E with $180 million, Energy Secretary Steven Chu called it "a big victory."
