Quinn Gillespie

Director, Energy and Science Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office

           This afternoon, the House Science, Space and, and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight held a hearing to discuss recent oversight reports from the DOE Inspector General and Government Accountability Office (GAO) on ARPA-E funding awards from 2009 until the present.  The Republican Majority submitted their own report for the record, which called into question a number of funding awards from ARPA-E for projects that also received funding from the private sector.  Dr. Arun Majumdar, Undersecretary of Energy, and formerly Director of ARPA-E, defended ARPA-E throughout the questioning, with the support of the Democratic minority, and Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), explaining the original charter of the organization – to fund breakthrough technologies that the private market cannot support on its own, and how ARPA-E’s work to date has all been consistent with that goal.

           Subcommittee Chairman Paul Broun (R-GA) presided over the hearing, opening with the assertion that ARPA-E awards could be crowding out private capital and also “using up the already scarce” resources that should be going to DOE Office of Science for basic research.  Minority Ranking Member Paul Tonko (D-NY) criticized the Majority for “rewriting” the GAO report requested by the Committee in only a week, and reaching radically different conclusions than the non-partisan group with the same fact set.

           Representatives from the GAO office, and Inspector General of the Department of Energy Gregory Friedman presented summaries of their two reports to the Committee – both finding that ARPA-E funding awards were all consistent with statutory goals.  The reports did note that some companies with similar technologies did receive private investment, though they noted that the majority did not.  Undersecretary Majumdar noted the fact that ARPA-E’s mandate is to accelerate adoption, and to fill a previously missing gap between basic science and later stage funding.  So the fact that certain technologies received private funding would not prevent or dissuade ARPA-E from supporting these technologies in order to accelerate the adoption curve and ensure that these technologies could come to market faster, and as American companies.

           Rep. Rohrabacher (R-CA) focused his comments on Beacon Power – a flywheel energy storage company that received a number of federal government awards including an ARPA-E grant, DOE grant, and loan guarantee.  Rohrabacher questioned the need for ARPA-E grants when the company received other grants and loan guarantees from the federal government.  He also questioned the efficacy of these awards as the company has recently gone into bankruptcy.  Dr. Majumdar noted that the awards were for different technologies, and that the ARPA-E award in particular was for advanced flywheels.  He also noted that while the company had gone into bankruptcy, the company is not liquidating, but restructuring and still meeting targets ARPA-E had set for it when it received the award.

           For more information and witness testimony, visit the House Science Committee.