Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
That one makes up for the other nine. Federally funded
R&D tends to be risk averse, perhaps because of fear of
criticism from those who do not understand the game.
Some years ago the US Congress asked the National
Academy of Sciences to evaluate the DOE
'
s energy
R&D program [
]. The report said that not only was it
worth it but that the societal bene
ts of a few of the
programs more than paid for the entire portfolio. The
venture capitalists would nod in agreement.
The stimulus bill passed by the US Congress after the
financial meltdown has in it an attempt to solve
the problem. It contains money for a new part of the
DOE called E-ARPA or the Energy Advanced Research
Projects Agency. It is modeled after the Defense Depart-
ment
s ARPA which has been a great success, among
other things funding the development of the
'
first large-
scale integrated circuits that are at the heart of all of our
computers, and developing the
first stages of the Internet
that business and industry rely on today. E-ARPA is new
but has done well, Crossing the valley has become much
easier. It is worth expanding.
Demand Side Management
This is a good program, also a Californian invention that
has spread to some, but not all, of the states. What the
California Public Utilities Commission did was to invent
a method to allow utilities to make money by getting
customers to use less of their product. Before DSM,
regulated utilities could only earn a
xed percentage
return on sales, so to make more money they had to
increase energy use. The CA-PUC did not tell utilities
