ARPA-E Blog
October is National Energy Action Month, a full month focused on underscoring how crucial energy is to our national prosperity, security, and environmental well-being. The central mission of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is to accelerate innovations that will create a secure, affordable and sustainable American energy future.
With approximately 173,000 terawatts of solar energy continuously striking the earth, solar energy is the most abundant energy resource available. To put this in perspective, solar energy totals more than 10,000 times the world’s total energy use. Most solar power is in the form of rooftop panels mounted on homes and businesses.
Americans spend a lot of time – and energy – driving and flying. The average U.S. driver logs about 13,000 miles every year. To fuel our commutes and summer road trips, Americans last year consumed more than 136 billion gallons of gasoline, which accounts for 60% of U.S. oil demand and is responsible for a quarter of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. On the commercial side, more than 10.3 billion gallons of jet fuel were consumed in 2014 by U.S. airlines alone.
For the last three years, TJ Augustine has served as a Technology-to-Market (Tech-to-Market) Advisor at ARPA-E, where he has helped prepare breakthrough energy technologies for transition from the lab to the market. He was responsible for leading the commercialization strategy for Reducing Emissions through Methanotrophic Organisms for Transportation Energy (REMOTE), Plants Engineered to Replace Oil (PETRO), and other ARPA-E programs in the area of liquid transportation fuels.
ARPA-E recently announced 14 new projects funded through the Advanced Research In Dry cooling (ARID) program, which aims to develop low-cost, highly efficient and scalable dry-cooling technologies for thermoelectric power plants in order to reduce water consumption in power generation.
Get to know more about Dr. Williams in this Q &A, adapted and excerpted from the Fireside Chat with Dr. Ellen Williams video from the 2015 ARPA-E Innovation Summit.
This past January, ARPA-E teamed up with Local Motors to present the LIghtweighting Technologies Enabling Comprehensive Automotive Redesign (LITECAR) Challenge, which sought innovative conceptual designs to lightweight a vehicle while maintaining or exceeding current U.S. automotive safety standards. With more than 250 conceptual designs submitted, Local Motors announced the winners of the LITECAR Challenge on Monday, April 20.
March 3, 2015
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