arpa-e

Congress is set to pass portions of the overall FY 2019 federal budget before the end of the current fiscal year, which has been rare over the last decade. To keep pace, SSTI will be running a series of FY 2019 budget updates. Part I is Energy and Water (including Regional Agencies), Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs. Part II is Defense with Labor and HHS, as well as a CR for the rest of the government through Dec. 7.

Although it has been slated for elimination under the president’s proposed budget, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program is making progress toward achieving its statutory mission and goals, and it “cannot reasonably be expected to have completely fulfilled those goals given so few years of operation and the size of its budget.” That is among the findings released this week by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) in its assessment of ARPA-E. The project was overseen by the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) and was tasked with assessing ARPA-E’s progress toward achieving its statutory mission and goals, and determining whether it is on a trajectory to achieve them. In short, the answer is that it is.