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[[Michael Rogers] In many ways the United States citizen today]
[is a little like the frog in the pan of hot water]
[that's sitting on an open flame on the stove.]
[The frog just thinks it's getting a little bit warmer.]
[The frog does not know that sooner or later]
[[ecomagination] [Made possible by GE]]
[Everyone knows that the energy supplies are getting tighter.]
[The cost of gas is going up.]
[The cost of heating a home is going up]
[as the price of energy of all sorts just continues to creep up.]
[What's going to happen is a relatively quick inanition]
[of the quality of life in this country.]
[[Corwin Hardham] It is a unique situation in that it is one time where ]
[we really need to innovate, to find a way to get energy ]
[from sources other than the conventional fossil fuel resources]
[that are making our planet uninhabitable by our civilization.]
[[Corwin Hardham] [CEO, CTO, Makani Power] This is a global time]
[in which science and engineering has the chance to really save the day,]
[to really develop a solution to a problem which is going to impact all of us.]
[[Heather Knight is a roboticist at Carnegie Melon University,]]
[[and a founder of Marilyn Monrobot, a robot arts collective.]]
[[Heather Knight] The Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy, or ARPA-E,]
[is a new office with an energy department, and its job is to fund]
[the kind of transformative technologies that could really change]
[[Michael Rogers] [New York Times Futurist-In-Residence] One of the important things]
[It started, of course, as DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration,]
[the idea that someone had to fund military research.]
[It was the place the internet came from.]
[It's the place that GPS came from,]
[very leading edge kinds of experiments that probably no one]
[would have funded back in the 70s or 80s,]
[yet they became absolutely essential to our commerce.]
[That's what ARPA is doing now with energy.]
[[Heather Knight] It's a kind of moon-shot approach ]
[with the understanding that many of the projects won't pan out.]
[But the ones that do could pay off hugely in the future]
[and change the way we use energy forever.]
[[Arun Majumdar] [Director, ARPA-E] Our job is to really capitalize ]
[energy breakthroughs and really identify the Wright brothers]
[and the Jonas Salk's of the 21st century,]
[and these are the pioneers of the 20th century.]
[Well, we want to find them for the 21st century]
[and invest in their breakthrough ideas,]
[and by its very nature these are risky.]
[But if they're successful, they could change the ballgame. ]
[[Heather Knight] We're out in the Bay Area to check out 2 companies ]
[The first one is Bio Architecture Labs.]
[[Heather Knight] [Futurist, Roboticist] We're in Berkeley outside of Bio Architecture Labs,]
[and they're architecting new kinds of microbes ]
[that can turn seaweed into fuel.]
[Biofuels have the potential to provide clean energy,]
[but the big question is where and how can we grow them]
[when most of our farmland is dedicated to food production?]
[The scientists at BAL think they've found a way to bypass that problem.]
[[Richard Bailey] [Chief Technology Officer, BAL] The goal, of course, is to try to replace,]
[at greater and greater percentages, the fuels we're now using in our cars,]
[liquid fuels, for use in tomorrow's fuels,]
[There is technology that can be developed today.]
[The key to the implementation of this technology really is the source]
[of a cost-effective raw material, and BAL believes that seaweed]
[presents a viable option for making that happen.]
[We're looking at how to create biofuels in completely new ways.]
[What they're doing is to take kelp, and that is very exciting because ]
[we've got plenty of shoreline to grow kelp,]
[and they've figured out a way to make fuel out of it.]
[Really it's about inventing the future.]
[[Heather Knight] They're currently working on growing seaweed on a ]
[Here in the Berkeley lab is where they figure out the science]
[of breaking seaweed into fuel.]
[[Adam Wargacki] [Chemical Engineer, BAL] Here we're really interested]
[in developing the microorganisms that can transform ]
[the seaweed into something more useful.]
[We're doing genetic engineering.]
[We're doing process engineering, and we're really trying to understand]
[the chemistry of the sugars in seaweed and the way ]
[metabolically they can be broken down and fermented]
[and turned into something valuable.]
[The energy challenge that the world faces is huge.]
[I personally believe that success over time]
[is going to take a lot of solutions.]
[Seaweed is clearly going to be one of them.]
[[Heather Knight] We're headed across town to Alameda where Makani Power,]
[another project funded by ARPA-E, is working with wind power in a whole new way.]
[We'll meet Corwin Hardham, one of the founders of Makani,]
[and find out more about what they do.]
[[Corwin Hardham] This operates on exactly the same physics as a wind turbine,]
[so if you imagine a wind turbine that's got those blades that's rotating around,]
[and if you look closely at a wind turbine the center part of the blade]
[is really not doing that much of the work.]
[In fact, most of the work, most of the energy production is done at the tip,]
[and so if you could imagine taking that tip of the wind turbine off]
[and flying it around in a circle, it looks very much like how this wing operates.]
[[Heather Knight] Unlike a traditional wind turbine that harnesses wind energy]
[from about 100 feet, Makani's new design]
[lets them capture the energy of the wind where it's most powerful, ]
[miles in the sky, and then through a tether]
[they transmit the power to a base station, then on to the grid.]
[[Corwin Hardham] So, this technology has the opportunity to really change]
[the way that we derive energy from the wind.]
[We make a technology which is much lighter weight, much lower mass,]
[and that means it's much more scalable, so it's lower cost.]
[It generates energy at a much lower cost, but also it's easier]
[to make more of this technology and deploy it quicker than conventional wind turbines,]
[and with this technology we can very quickly and cost effectively]
[We are looking to invest in the technology that are breakthroughs]
[that could create industries that do not quite exist today.]
[Makani Power is a very innovative technology.]
[It could reduce the cost of offshore wind significantly,]
[and that's the kind of idea that we're investing in right now.]
[In a way, we have been dining out on the inventions]
[of ARPA from basically the 70s and early 80s.]
[This is time now to have a new set of those technologies]
[because look at what the internet built for the United States.]
[We are absolutely the world leaders in that technology.]
[We need exactly the same thing in energy,]
[and that's why this is in a sense a new ground of innovation]
[that quite literally could--just as the internet--it could feed 30 ]
[or 40 years of industry and innovation in the United States.]
[We are looking for the inventors of the 21st century]
[who are taking high-risk ideas, but we're not investing ]
[We'll take the risk as long as these things, ]
[if successful, will change the ballgame]
[and ensure the US has a technological lead in the world]
[and can have massive economic growth in the future.]
[Those are the ideas that we're investing in.]
[[Heather Knight] There's no doubt our energy needs in the future will be ]
[one of the biggest challenges we've ever seen.]
[Even though the ARPA-E projects are high risk,]
[if even one succeeds it could be the answer that we're looking for.]
