Investing in early stage innovative technology will likely fall to the government for the foreseeable future, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said Tuesday at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Energy Innovation Summit. “I don’t think you’re going to see a big transition in terms of funding in the earlier stages of the innovation chain if you like … [because] pre-commercial you don’t have that many people who are willing to put their money into that investment until they can capture the intellectual property,” Moniz told reporters on the sidelines of the event.
ARPA-E is designed to support innovative transformational energy technologies of just the sort that Moniz referenced.
However, recent activity in the private sector might indicate an increase in funding for projects a little further along the line. “I certainly hope, and I think we will see, in the spirit of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition that [Bill] Gates led, I think that we will see a continued expansion of the amount of investment going into the whole chain towards deployment and scale up,” Moniz said.
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition was announced during the 21st session of the Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December. The coalition consists of private-sector investors worldwide who have committed to investing in high-risk clean energy technology. Breakthrough Energy was announced in conjunction with, though remains independent of, Mission Innovation, a group of 20 countries, including the U.S., that have committed to doubling their clean energy research and development funding.
During COP21, representatives from more than 190 countries adopted the world’s first universal climate deal, the Paris Agreement.
Moniz applauded Breakthrough Energy for getting ahead of the curve in what is certain to be an expanding clean energy marketplace. “The global markets, the U.S. and global markets in clean energy technology have been growing rapidly,” the secretary said. “Now you have 190 some countries in Paris saying we’re all going to pursue some decently ambitious goal in decarbonization, almost surely those markets are going to just start taking off even more strongly.”
That growing market is likely to hold, regardless of the results of the upcoming presidential election, Moniz said. Almost without exception, the current presidential nominees view climate change in an expectedly partisan manner, with the Democrats campaigning on platforms of increased climate action and the Republicans vowing to roll back climate-related regulations instituted by the Obama administration.
However, Moniz said, energy innovation is a largely bipartisan issue. “I think there’s a lot of support for this agenda, and I think that’s independent of the administration. When it comes to regulatory approached to climate obviously then there’s more disagreement at the moment,” he said.
