The U.S. Department of Energy continues to churn out important announcements — today establishing a fellowship program via its ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy) initiative. This news follows the Department’s distribution of $100 million in stimulus grants to experimental fuel, battery and carbon capture projects yesterday.
The fellowship program, which lasts two years, underscores the focus on jobs and the cultivation of people, not just technology to wage the climate battle. Scientists and researchers selected to be ARPA-E fellows will assist its directors to create programs, and continue their individual investigations as full-tie federal employees. They will also be encouraged to collaborate with one another to develop bold and disruptive green technologies. Some of these brainstorms will ideally result in formal proposals to Department of Energy higher-ups.
The group will be split between senior fellows, those with more than three years of professional work in a relevant field, and regular fellows, which are anticipated to be mostly post-doctoral researchers and even recent college graduates. ARPA-E’s leadership says it is looking for the best and the brightest minds to mold the new energy economy.
Also pertinent to the DOE’s stimulus allotment, it has also announced that financial institutions and investors can increase their involvement in companies that have received low-interest loan guarantees from the Department. Energy Secretary Steven Chu says that the change should give companies more flexibility in how they spend their money, better stimulate private investment in cleantech concepts, and defray costs for American taxpayers.
Before this ruling, players like export credit agencies and financial institutions were unable to provide complementary financing to companies that had received Title XVII loans or federal loan guarantees. Chu says the announcement is the final say on loan guarantee regulations.
On an unrelated note, the DOE is still closing cracks in existing energy efficiency regulations. Yesterday, it said it would sharpen the Energy Star program’s teeth (as of Jan. 2), stripping certain refrigerator-freezers of Energy Star status, particularly those made by LG. Apparently, several independent parties have verified that the appliances don’t meet criteria for the coveted label.
The Energy Star labels have been a factor in consumer consciousness for a while, signaling both an opportunity for conservation as well as energy savings. Studies have shown that it has become a real factor in how people choose which appliances to buy. It’s unclear whether LG will lose revenue based on the decision, but the company has already filed suit against the DOE for its actions — obviously it’s concerned.