Sign up for our daily briefing
Make your busy days simpler with Axios AM/PM. Catch up on what's new and why it matters in just 5 minutes.
Stay on top of the latest market trends
Subscribe to Axios Markets for the latest market trends and economic insights. Sign up for free.
Sports news worthy of your time
Binge on the stats and stories that drive the sports world with Axios Sports. Sign up for free.
Tech news worthy of your time
Get our smart take on technology from the Valley and D.C. with Axios Login. Sign up for free.
Get the inside stories
Get an insider's guide to the new White House with Axios Sneak Peek. Sign up for free.
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Want a daily digest of the top Denver news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Denver
Want a daily digest of the top Des Moines news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Des Moines
Want a daily digest of the top Twin Cities news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Twin Cities
Want a daily digest of the top Tampa Bay news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Tampa Bay
Want a daily digest of the top Charlotte news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Charlotte
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
The White House is taking the first steps to creating a new cross-agency federal R&D organization for climate technologies, but there's plenty we still don't know about the effort.
Why it matters: Biden's overall climate plan calls for a much more muscular federal role in scaling up research and commercialization of next-wave tech, even as it looks to speed deployment of existing low-carbon sources.
Driving the news: Thursday brought the announcement of a "Climate Innovation Working Group."
- The working group is co-led by the White House offices of Domestic Climate Policy, Science of Technology and Policy, and Management and Budget.
- Part of its mission is to "advance" plans to stand up Biden's proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency-Climate, or ARPA-C.
The big picture: The White House said the innovation group will focus on advancing and lowering costs of a wide set of technologies including...
- Carbon-neutral construction materials
- Much cheaper energy storage systems
- Carbon-free hydrogen
- Air conditioning and refrigeration that does not use planet-warming gases
- Zero-carbon heat and industrial processes for heavy industries like cement
- Advanced soil management and other farming practices that remove CO2
- Ways to retrofit existing industrial and power plants with CO2 capture
What we don't know: If the White House will ask Congress to formally create and fund ARPA-C, which would give it more permanence if lawmakers do it. A White House official said, "more specifics are forthcoming."
The intrigue: ARPA-C may sound familiar because of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) created under 2007 legislation and got its first funding in 2009 (and itself is modeled after the military's DARPA). Similarities between the Energy Department's ARPA-E and the ARPA-C concept extend beyond just the sound.
- "The precise boundaries between the two ARPAs aren’t entirely clear," MIT Technology Review reports.
- "[S]ome energy observers are confused about why the administration wants to expend political capital trying to set up and fund a new research agency rather than focusing on boosting capital for existing programs," the piece notes.
Speaking of ARPA-E, yesterday the Energy Department announced a $100 million solicitation for proposals, calling it the "first of billions of dollars of DOE R&D opportunities to be announced this year."
Go deeper: Biden ushers in historical turn on clean energy and climate change