Green Options

US Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu

Arizona State University professor Cody Friesen thinks he can make a metal-air battery with up to 11 times the energy density of lithium batteries at potentially half the cost. Now the US Department of Energy’s advanced research incubator ARPA-E has just given his spin-off company, Fluidic Energy, a $5.13 million research grant to try and do just that.

We are actually the second planet-altering species. Three billion years ago, Cyanobacteria were the first. They totally changed this planet to one that is safe for oxygen breathers. That was a big change for species at the time, and most species didn’t make it. Nearly all of them went extinct.

If we’re lucky, we won’t change our environment as much as Cyanobacteria did.  That’s the goal of the US Department of Energy ARPA-E. Inspired by the success of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; ARPA-E will fund high-risk, high-reward advances with the potential to completely change the way our species generates and consumes energy.

Arizona State’s Wim Vermass was of the 37 recipients of the DOE ARPA-E funding. He is teaching the ancient species to make our future fuel and to custom-make it just the way our species wants it.

President Obama announced new federal funding goals for science, particularly the transformational energy research program ARPA-E, just as a a global swine flu pandemic was getting underway, so it’s little wonder that the news sank with barely a ripple.  Among those who did take notice, the Sierra Club stated that “we have finally closed the books on the Bush era of climate denial.”  But a closer look at ARPA-E suggests that it’s way too soon to pop the corks.