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ENERGY INNOVATION: 

LETTING TECHNOLOGY LEAD 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JULY 19, 2017 

Serial No. 115–23 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY K. WEBER, Texas 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia 

RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana 

DRAIN LAHOOD, Illinois 

DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida 

JIM BANKS, Indiana 

ANDY BIGGS, Arizona 

ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas 

NEAL P. DUNN, Florida 

CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana 

RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

JACKY ROSEN, Nevada 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

PAUL TONKO, New York 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 

MARK TAKANO, California 

COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii 

CHARLIE CRIST, Florida 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

July 19, 2017 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee on 

Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ..................... 4 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 6 

Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives .... 9 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 11 

Witnesses: 

Dr. Jacob DeWitte, President and CEO, Oklo 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 13 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 16 

Dr. Gaurav N. Sant, Associate Professor and Henry Samueli Fellow, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Henry Samueli School of 

Engineering and Applied Science, University of California, Los Angeles 

(UCLA) 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 24 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 27 

Dr. Venky Narayanamurti, Benjamin Peirce Research Professor of Technology 

and Public Policy, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied 

Sciences, Harvard University 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 31 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 33 

Mr. Kiran Kumaraswamy, Market Development Director, AES Energy Storage 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 45 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 47 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 56 

Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions 

Dr. Venky Narayanamurti, Benjamin Peirce Research Professor of Technology 

and Public Policy, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied 

Sciences, Harvard University .............................................................................. 86 

(1) 

ENERGY INNOVATION: LETTING 

TECHNOLOGY LEAD 

Tuesday, July 19, 2017 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:09 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith 

[Chairman of the Committee] presiding. 
2 

Q:ongrcss of the 'l:lnitcd ~rates 

flonsc of Hcprcscnmtiocs 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

232'1 f\,\YSUFiN HOUSE OFFICE 8U!LO!NG 

WASHlNGfON, DC 20515-6301 

1202) 225-6371 

Full Committee 

Energy Innovation: Letting Technology Lead 

Wednesday, July 19,2017 

10:00 a.m. 

231 S Rayburn House Office Building 

Witnesses 

Dr. Jacob DeWitte, President and CEO, Oklo 

Dr. Gaurav N. Sant, Associate Professor and Henry Samueli Fellow, Department of Civil 

and Environmental Engineering, Ilcnry Samucli School of Engineering and Applied Science, 

University of Califomia, Los Angeles (UCLA) 

Dr. Veuky Narayanamurti, Benjamin Peirce Research Professor of Technology and Public 

Policy, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University 

Mr. Kiran Kumaraswamy, Market Development Director, AES Energy Storage 
3 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HEARING CHARTER 

July 12,2017 

TO: Members. Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

FROM: l'vlajority StaiT. Committee on Science. Space, and Technology 

SUB.JECT: Full committee hearing: "Energy Innovation: Letting Technology Lead" 

The Committee on Science, Space. and Technology will hold a full committee hearing 

titled Energy Innovation: Letting Technology Lead on Wednesday, July 19, 2017. at I 0:00a.m. 

in Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building. 

Hearing Purpose: 

The purpose of the hearing is to highlight private sector leadership on commercializing 

next generation energy technology to increase efficiency, environmental benefit, and consumer 

savings. ·rhis hearing will also explore the impact of research int!·astructurc and federally funded 

basic and early stage research on technology innovation. and regulatory hurdles that limit the 

success of innovative technologies. 

Witness List 

Dr. Jacob DeWitte, President and CEO, Oklo 

Hr. Gaurav N. Sant, Associate PnJjessor and Henry Samuefi Fellow, Department'!!' 

Civil and Environmental Engineering, Henry Samueli School r(f'Engineering and Applied 

Science, University l({Cal;fi,rnia, Los Angeles (UCLA) 

• Hr·. Venky Narayanamurti, Be1!jamin Peirce Research Professor '!{Technology and 

Public Po liLy, John A. Paulson School r!fEngineering and Applied Sciences. Harvard 

University 

• Mr, Kiran Kumaraswamy, Market Development Director, AES Energy Swragc 

Staff Contact 

For questions related to the hearing, please contact Emily Domenech of the Majority 

Staff at 202-226-2179. 
4 

Chairman SMITH. The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology will come to order. 

Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of 

the Committee at any time. 

And welcome to today’s hearing titled ‘‘Energy Innovation: Letting Technology Lead.’’ I’ll recognize myself for an opening statement and then the Ranking Member for her opening statement. 

Today we will hear from a panel of private sector innovators who 

are inventing the way to bring next-generation technology to the 

energy market. New technology provides solutions to today’s energy 

and environmental challenges. Instead of government mandates, 

more regulations, and higher energy taxes, the federal government 

should invest in the research that allows innovative technology like 

advanced nuclear power and energy storage to succeed. We should 

all agree on these technology-driven energy solutions. 

Unfortunately, nuclear power, which is the only reliable emissions-free source of electricity, is still criticized by environmental 

activists today. Those who are sincerely interested in solving some 

of America’s environmental challenges should endorse and promote 

these critical new technologies. 

This hearing will consider the value of federally funded basic and 

early-stage research as well as the research infrastructure at universities and national labs. These investments provide valuable expertise that would otherwise be unavailable to industry. The Science Committee has jurisdiction over the $9 billion R&D 

portfolio at the Department of Energy, which funds basic science 

and energy research. Fundamental research conducted by the DOE 

Office of Science has led to groundbreaking discoveries about our 

universe, innovative new technologies, and private sector achievements across the energy and manufacturing industries. 

Much of the technology we will hear about today is rooted in the 

basic science discoveries made at DOE national labs. Industry can 

build on these early-stage research discoveries, and use research 

infrastructure to create market-ready, next-generation energy technologies. For example, Dr. Jacob DeWitte, who started his career 

as an intern at Sandia National Lab, is the Co-Founder of Oklo, 

a privately funded startup company working to commercialize a 

small advanced nuclear reactor design. Dr. DeWitte’s compact fast 

reactor design is ideal to replace the diesel generators used in rural 

areas, industrial operations, or even on military bases. 

This reactor was developed using early-stage nuclear energy research conducted by DOE national labs. It will have zero emissions 

and could lower costs for consumers by up to 90 percent. If environmentalists are serious about reducing emissions, they should champion advanced nuclear reactors as an essential part of a clean energy future. 

At UCLA, Dr. Gaurav Sant and his team have used basic research in chemistry, materials science, engineering, and high-performance computing to design a technology that converts carbon dioxide into a cement-like material. This technology could take captured carbon dioxide from power plants and turn it into a usable, 

cost-effective material. This innovative technology has the potential 

to revolutionize the market for CO2, turning a waste product into 

profit. 
5 

Even large companies can benefit from basic research. AES Energy Storage is revolutionizing renewable energy through the deployment of batteries for the electric grid. AES’s most recent 

project in California is capable of storing up to 120 megawatt hours 

of energy produced by wind and solar power. This is the energy 

equivalent of serving 20,000 customers for four hours. Basic and 

early-stage research in electrochemistry can improve the efficiency 

and resiliency of the thousands of batteries used in these facilities. 

This Committee authorized exactly this kind of basic and fundamental research in the DOE Research and Innovation Act, which 

passed the House earlier this year. Enabling these private sector 

innovators to develop the most competitive ideas is essential to 

groundbreaking energy technology. If we want to protect the environment, lower costs for consumers, and increase our energy potential, innovative technology is the solution. 

And note that during the White House Made in America week, 

we have three American companies testifying on innovative technology. 

By allowing the market, not the government, to determine the 

best approach, we can develop technology that will increase energy 

efficiency, reduce environmental impact, and save the American 

people money. 

America’s energy history is full of innovative technologies that 

have unlocked new possibilities. It is technology, not regulation, 

that improves efficiency, lowers costs, and reduces the environmental impact of all kinds of energy. 

For too long the government has picked winners and losers 

through regulation, federal loans and loan guarantees, or marketdistorting subsidies. It is time to let the scientists, researchers, engineers, and inventors ensure that the United States remains the 

world technology leader and is better able to address environmental concerns. 

As we shape the future of the Department, our priority must be 

basic energy research and development that only the federal government has the resources to pursue. This will allow private sector 

innovators, like the witnesses who join us today, to take 

groundbreaking energy technology to the marketplace, creating 

jobs and growing our economy. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:] 
6 

For Immediate Release 

July 19, 20 I 7 

Media Contact: Kristina Baum 

(202) 225-6371 

Statement of Chairman lamar Smith (R-Texas) 

Energy Innovation: Letting Technology Lead 

Chairman Smith: Good morning, Today we will hear from a panel of private sector 

innovators who are inventing the way to bring next generation technology to the 

energy market 

New technology provides solutions to today's energy and environmental challenges, 

Instead of government mandates, more regulations, and higher energy taxes, the 

federal government should invest in the research that allows innovative technology 

like advanced nuclear power and energy storage to succeed_ We should all agree 

on these technology-driven energy solutions, 

Unfortunately, nuclear power, which is the only baseload, emissions free source of 

electricity, is still criticized by environmental activists today, 

If those on the left are truly interested in solving some of America's environmental 

challenges, they would endorse and promote these critical new technologies, 

This hearing will consider the value of federally funded basic and early stage research 

as well as the research infrastructure at universities and national labs, These 

investments provide valuable expertise that would otherwise be unavailable to 

industry, 

The Science Committee has jurisdiction over the $9 billion R&D portfolio at the 

Department of Energy, which funds basic science and energy research, Fundamental 

research conducted by the DOE Office of Science has led to groundbreoking 

discoveries about our universe, innovative new technologies, and private sector 

achievements across the energy and manufacturing industries, 

Much of the technology we will hear about today is rooted in the basic science 

discoveries made at DOE national labs, Industry can build on these early stage 

research discoveries, and use research infrastructure to create market-ready, next 

generation energy technologies, 

For example, our witness Dr, Jacob DeWitte, who started his career as on intern at 

Sandia Notional Lob, is the co-founder of Oklo, a privately funded start-up company 

working to commercialize a small advanced nuclear reactor design, 

Dr, DeWitte's compact fast reactor design is ideal to replace the diesel generators 

used in rural areas, industrial operations, or even on military bases, This reactor was 
7 

developed using early stage nuclear energy research conducted by DOE notional 

lobs. 

It will hove zero emissions and could lower costs for consumers by up to 90%. If 

environmentalists ore serious about reducing emissions, they should champion 

advanced nuclear reactors as a key port of a clean energy future. 

At UCLA Dr. Gourov Sont and his team hove used basic research in chemistry, 

materials science, engineering, and high performance computing to design a 

technology that converts carbon dioxide into a cement-like material. 

This technology could toke captured carbon dioxide from power plants and turn it into 

a usable, cost effective material. This innovative technology has the potential to 

revolutionize the market for C02, turning a waste product into profit. 

Even Iorge companies con benefit from basic research. 

AES Energy Storage is revolutionizing renewable energy through the deployment of 

batteries for the electric grid. AES's most recent project in California is capable of 

storing up to 120 megawatt hours of energy produced by wind and solar power. This is 

the energy equivalent of serving 20,000 customers for four hours. 

Basic and early stage research in electrochemistry con improve the efficiency and 

resiliency of the thousands of batteries used in these facilities. 

This Committee authorized exactly this kind of basic and fundamental research in the 

DOE Research and Innovation Act, which passed the House earlier this year. 

Enabling these private sector innovators to develop the most competitive ideas is 

essential to ground-breaking energy technology. 

If we want to protect the environment, lower costs for consumers, and increase our 

energy potentiaL innovative technology is the solution, 

And note that during the White House "Mode in America" week, we hove three 

American companies testifying on innovative technology. 

By allowing the market- not the government- to determine the best approach, we 

con develop technology that will increase energy efficiency, reduce environmental 

impact. and save the American people money. 

America's energy history is full of innovative technologies that hove unlocked new 

possibilities. It is technology, not regulation, that improves efficiency, lowers costs, and 

reduces the environmental impact of all kinds of energy. 

For too long the government has picked winners and losers through regulation, federal 

loans and loon guarantees, or market-distorting subsidies. It is time to let the scientists, 
8 

researchers, engineers, and inventors ensure that the United States remains the world 

technology leader and is better able to address environmental concerns. 

As we shape the future of the Deportment, our priority must be basic energy research 

and development that only the federal government has the resources to pursue. This 

will allow private sector innovators, like the witnesses who join us today, to toke 

ground-breaking energy technology to the marketplace, creating jobs and growing 

our economy. 

### 
9 

Chairman SMITH. That concludes my opening statement, and the 

gentlewoman from Texas, the Ranking Member, is recognized for 

hers. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank 

you for holding this hearing. I’d like to thank all of our witnesses 

for being here today. 

In years past, this Committee would hold an annual hearing on 

the Administration’s budget proposal for the Department of Energy, and I would typically begin my remarks with a few brief reminders of how government-supported energy research can pay off, 

ranging from the birth of the nuclear power industry to the shale 

gas revolution. I’d then move on to provide my views on what usually was a thoughtful, well-crafted budget proposal, even if I might 

have had some disagreements with it. 

Unfortunately, this is not a typical year. First, while the Administration’s budget blueprint was released back in March and its detailed budget request was released in May, our Committee has still 

not yet scheduled a hearing with Secretary Perry testifying to explain and defend his proposal. 

While the panel before us today has a broad and impressive 

range of expertise that will at least enable us to begin this discussion, none of these witnesses can speak for the Department. In 

order for this Committee to fulfill its oversight responsibilities, I 

urge the Chairman to schedule a hearing with the Secretary as 

soon as possible. 

As for the fiscal year DOE budget request, I want to be clear: I 

am deeply disturbed by the Trump Administration’s proposed budget for the Department of Energy. It would completely eliminate 

ARPA–E, an agency that has already demonstrated incredible success in advancing high-risk, high-reward energy technology solutions that neither the public nor the private sector had been willing 

or able to support in the past. This accomplishment was highlighted in a congressionally mandated National Academies review 

of the agency released just last month. Bipartisan industry leaders 

like Norm Augustine and Bill Gates have repeatedly called for tripling this agency’s budget given the unique role that it is now playing in our energy innovation pipeline. 

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t refer my colleagues to Secretary Perry’s March 8th tweet, issued just eight days before the budget blueprint was released, which states, and I quote, ‘‘Innovators like the 

ones supported by our ARPA–E program are key to advancing 

America’s energy economy.’’ I really couldn’t have said it any better. 

In addition, the President’s budget proposal would eliminate 

DOE’s loan guarantee and Advanced Vehicle Technology Manufacturing programs. Mr. Chairman, we just held a hearing on these 

programs a few months ago, and we learned that their record of accomplishment more than justifies our continued support. The DOE 

Loan Programs Office has been instrumental in launching the utility-scale PV industry, Tesla Motors, the construction of our first 

new nuclear reactors in 30 years, and it is now supporting the commercialization of new carbon capture and reuse technologies. Overall, the Loan Office’s losses are only about two percent of its entire 

portfolio, a rate that is lower than many venture capitalists 
10 

achieve. And even after accounting for those losses, the interest 

payments from these loans and loan guarantees have returned over 

$1 billion to the Treasury. If we’re aiming to create jobs and reduce 

the deficit, these are exactly the programs we should be supporting. 

Finally, the budget proposal would slash the Department’s other 

critical energy technology offices for energy efficiency, renewables, 

the grid, fossil energy, and nuclear energy by $2.3 billion overall, 

or about 57 percent. And it would cut the DOE Office of Science, 

the largest supporter of physical sciences research in the country, 

by over $900 million, or 17 percent. 

Our national infrastructure for scientific and energy research 

would be irreparably harmed if these cuts were actually implemented. 

Now, I’m not going to tell you that every program the Department currently implements is perfect, that reforms should never be 

considered, or that reasonable people can’t simply disagree on the 

best way to allocate its resources even after a careful, rigorous review. 

One of my largest concerns now, especially given the incredibly 

severe damage that this proposal would impose on our entire research enterprise, is that such a thoughtful review never actually 

took place before this budget proposal was released. In fact, last 

month Administration officials confirmed that there was no engagement with the private sector at all to determine what industry 

would be able or willing to fund in the absence of federal investment. This is simply unacceptable. 

In closing, I hope that we can all take a step back and more carefully consider the direction we want to move the Department in 

over the next several years. 

I look forward to the hearing and listening to our witnesses on 

all of these critical issues. I yield back whatever balance of time I 

have. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:] 
11 

OPENINC1 STATEMENT 

Ranking Memhcr Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) 

House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

"Energy Innovation: Lclling Technology Lead" 

July 19,2017 

Thank you, Chairman Smith for holding this hearing, and I would like to thank the witnesses for 

being here today. 

In years past this Committee would hold an annual hearing on the Administration's budget 

proposal for the Department of Energy, and I would typically begin my remarks with a few brief 

reminders of how government-supported energy research can pay off ranging from the birth of 

the nuclear power industry to the shale gas revolution. I'd then move on to provide my views on 

what usually was a thoughtful. \Vell-cratied budget proposal. even if I might have had a few 

disagreements with it. 

Unfortunately. this is not a typical year. First. while the Administration's budget blueprint was 

released back in March and its detailed bttdget request was released in May. our Committee has 

still not yet scheduled a hearing with Secretary Perry testifying to explain and defend his 

proposal. While the panel before us today has a broad and impressive range of expertise that will 

at least enable us to begin this discussion, none of these witnesses can speak for the Department. 

In order for this Committee to fulfill its oversight responsibilities. I urge the Chairman to 

schedule a hearing with the Secretary as soon as possible. 

As for the I'Y 18 DOE budget request. I want to be clear. I am deeply disturbed by the Trump 

Administration's proposed budget for the Department of Energy. It would completely eliminate 

ARPA-E. an agency that has already demonstrated incredible success in advancing high-risk. 

high-reward energy technology solutions that neither the public nor the private sector had been 

willing or able to suppot1 in the past. This accomplishment was highlighted in a Congressionally 

mandated National Academies review of the agency released just last month. Bipartisan industry 

leaders like Norm Augustine and Bill Gates have repeatedly called for tripling this agency's 

budget given the unique role that it is now playing in our energy innovation pipeline. And I'd be 

remiss if I didn't refer my colleagues to Secretary Perry's March 8th tweet. issued just 8 days 

before this budget blueprint was released, which states. and I quote. "Innovators like the ones 

supported by our ARPA-E program are key to advancing America's energy economy."! couldn't 

have said it better myself. 

In addition. the President's budget proposal would eliminate DOE's loan guarantee and 

Advanced Vehicle Technology Manufacturing programs. Mr. Chairman. we just held a hearing 

on these programs a few months ago, and we learned that their record of accomplishment more 

than justifies our continued support. The DOE Loan Programs Office has been instrumental in 

launching the utility-scale PV industry. Tesla Motors. the construction of our first new nuclear 

reactors in 30 years. and it is now supporting the commercialization of new carbon capture and 

reuse technologies. Overall. the Loan Oftice ·s losses are only about 2% of its entire portfolio- a 

rate that is lower than many venture capitalists achieve. And even after accounting for those 
12 

losses, the interest payments from these loans and loan guarantees have returned over $1 billion 

to the Treasury. If we're aiming to create jobs ami reduce the deficit. these are exactly the 

programs we should be supporting. 

Finally. the budget proposal would slash the Department's other critical energy technology 

offices for energy efficiency, rcnewables, the grid. fossil energy. and nuclear energy by $2.3 

billion overall or about 57%. And it would cut the DOE Office of Science, the largest supporter 

of physical sciences research in the country. by over $900 million or about 17%. Our national 

infl·astructure for scientific and energy research would be irreparably harmed if these cuts were 

actually implemented. 

Now, I am not going to tell you that every program the Department currently implements is 

perfect. that relorms should never be considered. or that reasonable people can't simply disagree 

on the best \Nay to allocate its resources even alter a careful, rigorous review. One of my largest 

concerns now, especially given the incredibly severe damage that this proposal would impose on 

our entire research enterprise, is that such a thoughtful review never actually took place before 

this budget proposal was released. In fact. last month Administration oflicials confirmed that 

there was no engagement with the private sector at all to determine what industry would be able 

or willing to fund in the absence of federal investment. That is simply unacceptable. 

In closing, I hope that we can all take a step back and more carefully consider the direction we 

want to move the Department in over the next several years. I look forward to hearing what our 

witnesses have to say on each of these critical issues, and I yield back the balance of my time. 
13 

Chairman SMITH. Well, actually there’s not much balance left but 

I appreciate the gentlewoman yielding back, and thank you for 

your statement. 

Before I introduce our witnesses today, I’d like to introduce the 

newest member of the Science Committee, Ralph Norman of South 

Carolina. Having served as a former state rep in South Carolina, 

he brings a wealth of experience to the Committee, and he’s going 

to be serving on the Environment and Oversight Subcommittees, 

and Ralph, we welcome you to the Committee. 

And I’ll go to our witnesses. Our first witness today is Dr. Jacob 

DeWitte, Co-Founder and CEO of Oklo. Previously, Dr. DeWitte 

worked at Sandia National Lab, Urenco U.S., and the Naval Reactor Research Laboratories. He studied nuclear engineering at the 

University of Florida and received his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering 

from MIT. 

Our next witness is Dr. Gaurav N. Sant, Associate Professor and 

Henry Samueli Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. 

Dr. Sant received his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and Ph.D. 

from Purdue University. 

Our third witness today is Dr. Venky, and he prefers to be called 

by his first name, Dr. Venky, which makes it easier on all of us. 

Dr. Venky is the Benjamin Peirce Research Professor of Technology 

and Public Policy at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Dr. Venky previously served as Dean of 

the John Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and 

Dean of Physical Sciences at Harvard. He received his bachelor’s 

and master’s degree in physics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi 

University. 

Our final witness today is Dr. Kiran Kumaraswamy, Market Development Director at AES Energy Storage. He previously served 

as the Senior Manager at ICF International in Fairfax, Virginia. 

He received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the 

University of Madras. 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. Madras. 

Chairman SMITH. Madras, and his master’s degree in engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. 

And we welcome you all to the Committee hearing today and 

look forward to your testimony, and Dr. DeWitte, we’ll begin with 

you. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. JACOB DEWITTE, 

PRESIDENT AND CEO, OKLO 

Dr. DEWITTE. Thank you, and Chairman Smith and Ranking 

Member Johnson, and distinguished Members of this Committee, I 

want to thank you for holding this hearing and for giving me the 

opportunity to testify today. I am honored to be here, and I’m eager 

to share my experience commercializing advanced reactor technologies that build upon a rich legacy of research and development 

with the national laboratory system and the Department of Energy. 

As Chairman Smith mentioned in his intro, I was fortunate to 

grow up around Sandia National Laboratory, which played a huge 

role in influencing my decision to go into the fields of technology, 

science, engineering and math as well as pursue ultimately an en-
14 

trepreneurial career, and I’m also excited to be working with them 

now further to commercialize this technology. 

So I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Oklo, a Silicon Valley-based 

company developing and building a very small advanced reactor 

that produces 1 to 2 megawatts of electric power. We sometimes 

refer to this as a micro-reactor that is designed to bring distributed, clean, affordable, and reliable nuclear power in small packages to a wide variety of markets, both domestically and internationally. 

We started Oklo because we believe advanced reactors will play 

a significant role in the energy mix of the future, and we want to 

make that future a reality as quickly as possible. 

Over half of the active advanced reactor commercialization efforts ongoing in the United States today are pursuing fast reactor 

technologies. One of the key technologies to the success of fast reactor R&D in the United States has been the development of metal 

fuels. Metal fuels are alloys of uranium or other actinides that combine incredible durability, flexibility and resilience to achieve phenomenal fuel utilization, manufacturability, and safety performance. Metal fuel was used in several key early experimental reactors operated in the 1950s and 1960s and showed great promise 

but it was sidelined until several key engineering discoveries were 

made through R&D campaigns sponsored by the Atomic Energy 

Commission and then the DOE, which ultimately enabled the fuels 

to realize their potential. These advances were highlighted by successful demonstrations at the EBR–II reactor, which operated in 

Idaho. 

Over half of the fast reactor developers in the United States are 

building upon this rich R&D legacy in metal fuel, and it is a striking example of a successful government investment in R&D that 

matured a promising technology to the point of readiness and commercialization. 

There are also opportunities to expand upon the successes in 

metal fuel. Lessons learned in the development of metal fuels have 

identified avenues to expand its capabilities, which illustrates the 

continuum of innovation that can occur when one discovery leads 

to many more than can further advance the state of the art. 

At Oklo, we are working to commercialize a reactor that builds 

on the successful legacy of metal fuel. We pursue a business model 

of following market needs and demands, in other words, we strive 

to make reactors people want. It can be tempting to push an exciting new technology to market, but then miss what the market 

needs for the sake of the technology, so talking to users to understand what the market requires and wants takes discipline. In our 

experience, we found the capabilities offered by metal fuel match 

customer needs and have continued to find market fit and traction 

thanks in part to R&D success of metal fuel. 

We’ve partnered with several national labs to date including Argonne, Idaho and Sandia National Laboratories to support our commercialization work. A significant amount of this work has focused 

on commercializing our specific application and design of metal 

fuel. For example, we are working with Argonne and Idaho supported by the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation and Nuclear, 

also known as GAIN, to assemble fuel performance data that we 
15 

used in formal pre-application meetings with the NRC to support 

our licensing case, as well as to fabricate three prototypic fuel elements demonstrating key characteristics, which we were excited to 

announce all three hit production specs. 

We are currently expanding our work with the national labs because many of the capabilities we need are uniquely found in the 

national lab complex, providing us with an international advantage. This is why it is so important to maintain and preserve our 

capabilities and expertise in the national lab system and also why 

we need to develop new capabilities like a fast test reactor. 

In fact, I would like to highlight the efforts to build a fast reactor 

that this Committee and Congressman Weaver has so earnestly led 

and supported in a bipartisan way. This is incredibly important to 

develop this capability in the United States because the construction and operation of a domestic fast test reactor will pay substantial dividends to American energy competitiveness as well as leadership. This facility will be a national asset and will not only accelerate ongoing advanced reactor commercialization efforts but will 

also be a catalyst for new innovations and new technologies. 

Furthermore, to support ongoing innovation, DOE needs to provide a fuel source for demonstration, prototype, and first-of-a-kind 

advanced reactors by providing low enriched uranium fuels that 

are enriched above the five percent enrichment that current LWR 

fuels use. 

In general, the regulatory challenges that we face in advanced 

reactor space have been overstated, and I’d like to take a few minutes, or few moments, I should say, to comment on that. While 

there are challenges, I must emphasize that the widely-held view 

that advanced reactors cannot be licensed today is mistaken. We 

are formally engaged in pre-application activities with the NRC 

and have found clear licensing pathways for our technology but 

work remains. 

Innovation in nuclear is proceeding at a pace reminiscent of the 

early days of nuclear power, and the United States is still the global leader, but we need to be mindful of international competition. 

China and Russia are investing heavily to develop advanced nuclear technologies, and we cannot afford to fall behind. Our national capacity to innovate, combined with our national capabilities 

to research and develop, give us tremendous advantages. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. DeWitte follows:] 
16 

Testimony of 

Dr. Jacob DeWitte 

CEO and Co-Founder, Oklo Inc. 

Chair, Fast Reactor Working Group 

Before the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

United States House of Representatives 

Energy Innovation: Letting Technolo&'Y Lead 

July 19, 2017 

Written Testimony 

Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson, and distinguished members of this Committee, J want 

to thank you for holding this hearing and for giving me the opportunity to testify. I am honored to 

be here today, and I am eager to share my experience commercializing advanced reactor 

technologies that build upon a rich legacy of research and development with the national laboratory 

system and the Department of Energy. 

I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Oklo, a Silicon Valley based company developing and building 

a very small advanced reactor that produces 2 MW of electric power. We sometimes refer to it as 

a micro-reactor that is designed to bring distributed, clean, atlordablc, and reliable nuclear power 

in small packages to the market. These reactors fit into a containerized system that can power a 

wide variety of markets both domestically and internationally, which do not have access to 

aff()rdable and reliable power, and in some cases, do not have access to power at all. 

Our reactor operates purely on natural forces, with very few moving parts in the entire system, and 

it is designed to operate for more than l 0 years before refueling. It will produce reliable, 

affordable, safe, emission-free power wherever needed. The reactor is sized appropriately to open 

up new opportunities for clean and safe nuclear power in remote and rural communities, as well 

as industrial and military sites in areas that are too small for larger reactors. The Oklo reactor has 

the potential to reduce some of these customer's energy bills by up to 90 percent. 

Furthcnnore, our reactor can use fuel nearly 300 times more efflciently than cuiTcnt reactors, 

producing less waste, and can actually consume the used fuel from today's reactors as well as the 

depleted uranium stockpiles around the nation. In fact, fast reactors like ours could power the 

world for over 500 years with the global inventory of used fuel and depleted uranium. Our reactors 

can also assist with plutonium disposition by consuming excess cold war era materials and turning 

them into clean, peaceful energy. 
17 

We started Oklo because we believe advanced reactors will play a significant role in the energy 

mix of the future, and we want to make that future a reality as quickly as we can. 

Advanced reactors arc next generation nuclear technologies that can provide afli.)rdablc, reliable, 

and clean power that can be deployed on a global scale. They offer the potential to realize the 

energy tl.1ture envisioned by the intellectual giants upon whose shoulders we all stand: Fermi, 

Weinberg, Wigncr, Seaborg, and others who saw the potential that next-generation reactors have. 

Some of the key attributes include: 

• Competitive economics due to reduced capital costs and shortened construction times 

• Multiple energy product streams ranging from electricity to process heat 

• Improved fuel cfticiency and the ability to consume used nuclear fuel 

• Flexible operations such as load following and grid stabilization to couple with solar and 

wind 

• Flexible siting, independent of access to cooling water 

Advanced reactor technologies arc varied and diverse in terms of the coolants, materials, fuels, 

and neutron spectrum they usc, and fast reactors represent over half of the active advanced reactor 

commercialization etTorts ongoing in the United States today. Fast reactors are well suited to 

achieving the benefits offered by advanced reactors, and they build upon a rich legacy of proven 

and demonstrated technologies, including the groundbrcaking success of the EBR-1! reactor. 

One of the key technologies to the success of fast reactor research and development in the United 

States has been the development of metal 1\Jels. Metal fuels are alloys of uranium or other actinides 

that combine incredible durability, 11cxibility, and resilience to achieve phenomenal fuel 

utilization, manufllcturability, and safety behavior. Metal tl.JCl was used in several early 

experimental reactors operated in the 1950s and 1960s, and showed great promise, but were 

sidelined until several key engineering discoveries were made through research and development 

campaigns sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and then the Department of 

Energy (DOE) that enabled the fuels to realize their potential. These advances were highlighted 

by several successful demonstrations at the EBR-JI reactor in Idaho which operated from 1964 to 

1994: 

• Demonstrated fuel recycling by using over 39,000 recycled fhel elements. 

• Demonstrated high fuel utilization with less waste, achieving bumups four times higher 

than the current industry standard. 

2 
18 

• Demonstrated groundbreaking safety behavior with the Shutdown Heat Removal Tests in 

1986. 

The bene !its and capabilities of metal fuels make them a key enabling technology tor advanced 

reactor developers, and over half of the fast reactor developers in the United States are building 

upon this rich research and development legacy. This is a striking example of a successful 

govemment investment in research and development that matured a promising early stage 

technology to the point of commercial readiness. 

There are also opportunities to expand upon these successes. Lessons learned in the development 

of metal fuels have identified avenues to expand its capabilities and applicability to new designs 

and new performance features, such as advanced fabrication methods, liners and coatings, dopants. 

new claddings. new geometries, and tailored engineered properties at the atomistic level. These 

branches on the metal fuel tree may lead to higher temperature operations, longer il.1el lifetimes, 

and overall better pertormance that further enhance the performance of fl1st reactors. 

These technologies present research and development opportunities that can follow similar 

pathways, and arc ripe for fllliher investment as they mature to commercial readiness. In fl1ct, 

industry is already partncring with the national laboratories to pursue some of these technologies. 

This illustrates the continuum of innovation that occurs when one discovery leads to many more 

that can further advance the state of the art. 

Oklo is working to commercialize a reactor that builds on the successful legacy of metal fuel. We 

pursue a business model of following market needs and demands, in other words, we strive to 

make reactors people want. It can be tempting to push an exciting new technology to market, but 

miss what the market needs for the sake of the technology, so talking to users to understand what 

the market wants requires discipline. In our early days, we found the capabilities offered by metal 

fuel reactor designs fit customer needs, and have continued to find market fit and traction thanks 

in part to the research and development etTorts in metal fuel. 

Research Inti·astructure 

The research and development infrastructure at the national labs has played, and will continue to 

play a key role in commercializing advanced reactors. This infrastructure includes world-leading 

experimental facilities, research reactors, and expertise. These resources are also helpfiJI to 

industry as we work with the national laboratories to tap into their capabilities. 

We have partnered with several national labs to date, including Argonne National Laboratory, 

Idaho National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories to support our commercialization 

efforts. A significant amount of this work has focused on commercializing our metal fuel design. 

For example, ongoing work with Argonne and Idaho supported by the Gateway lor Accelerating 

3 
19 

Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) program has assembled fuel perfom1ance data that we used in 

formal pre-application meetings with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to support our 

I icensing efforts, and has enabled us to fabricate three prototypic fuel clements demonstrating key 

manufacturability characteristics. We arc currently expanding our work with the national labs 

because many of the capabilities we need arc uniquely found in the national lab complex, providing 

us with an international advantage. Similar stories are found throughout the national lab system 

and arc an example of how valuable the national lab system is. 

Furthermore, ! was fortunate to grow up ncar Sandia, and my experiences with the lab in my 

community were instrumental in my growth. Laboratory tours, staff visits to my schools, and 

internships I had at the lab were significant influences in my decisions to pursue technical work. 

The labs play a crucial role in their communities and the national innovation ecosystem. 

Research and Development Challeng«~ and Qpportunities 

The legacy of research and development by the DOE and its predecessors in the last 70 years has 

been tremendously helpful to advanced reactor developers today. We arc all building on that 

work. More recently, DOE has supported programs to help accelerate advanced reactor 

commercialization by improving how industry can work with the national Jabs, but there is still 

more we can do. The GAIN program is a great example of recent efforts to enhance how industry 

can work with the national labs and DOE. In the past year, significant progress has been made 

through the GAIN program to advance these eftorts, and these will continue to expand. 

The work by DOE and the national labs to characterize and qualify advanced reactor fnels has 

been and will continue to be quite valuable to advanced reactor commercialization etTorts. The 

facilities and resources used tor this work arc good examples ofjust some of the capabilities within 

the national laboratory complex from which we and other advanced reactor developers can benefit. 

GAIN provides an avenue for streamlined access to DOE facilities and expertise, and continued 

initiatives within tbc GAIN program will help propel advanced reactor efforts. Additionally, DOE 

sites could be ideal proving grounds for first-of-a-kind reactors. NuScale and INL arc paving the 

way here, as NuScalc plans to build their first plant in Idaho. 

Unfortunately, some of these capabilities are also deteriorating, or have been shut down. For 

example, the pn:mature closures of the FFTF and EBR-IT reactors ended access to domestic fast 

neutron sources. This has slowed advanced reactor commercialization et1orts, and has slowed the 

continuum of innovation that will lead to even better materials, fuels, and other technologies which 

will enhance advanced reactor capabilities in the future. These national assets and capabilities 

must be maintained. 

New capabilities also need to be developed. I specifically want to highlight the cftorts to build a 

fast test reactor that this Committee has so earnestly supported. It is a tragedy that we terminated 

4 
20 

our last neutron irradiation capabilities in the 1990s. and are now forced to go overseas for 

irradiation testing. The lack of these domestic capabilities mnst be addressed, and the construction 

and operation of a domestic fast test reactor will pay substantial dividends to American energy 

competitiveness and leadership. This facility be a national asset that will not only accelerate 

ongoing advanced reactor commercialization efforts, but will also be the catalyst tor new 

innovations and new technologies. 

In addition to experimental facilities, DOE and the national labs arc developing world leading 

modeling and simulation tools that support advanced reactor design and analysis. Advances in 

software and computing have helped fuel the recent growth of the advanced reactor industry. lt 

has never been cheaper to design and analyze new technologies. These capabilities provide a 

significant advantage to U.S. advanced reactor developers, and we should invest in flllihcr research 

and development to enhance these capabilities and create new ones. However, it can be 

prohibitively difficult, costly, and time consuming tor industry to access and usc some of these 

publicly-funded capabilities. This can drive industry users away fi·om these tools, limiting 

opportunities for commercialization and diminishing the value oft he investments made to develop 

them. The challenges to accessing these tools are a result of a variety of factors, but one of which 

is the lack of minimal support to maintain these tools. Without maintenance, these tools will 

remain difficult to access and atrophy away. Fortunately, there has been demonstrable progress to 

improve these processes in the last year, but there is still more to do. 

Other DOE resources and capabilities that arc often underapprcciatcd include their inventory of 

nuclear fuel materials, and their capability to provide these materials to support advanced reactor 

demonstrations. Demonstration, prototype, and t!rst-of-a-kind advanced reactors will require a 

variety of fuels, and we will all benefit from being able to usc some of the fuel that DOE manages. 

This is particularly relevant to low enriched uranium fi.tels that arc enriched above the 5% 

enrichment that current light water reactor (L WR) fuels use. DOE should anticipate these 

opportunities, and manage their fuel resources accordingly to maintain fuels in usable fom1s and 

compositions. This will also reduce DOE's fuel management burdens. 

DOE should also work with the relevant federal agencies to modernize nuclear expoti control rules. 

Unfortunately, recent changes to nuclear technology export controls arc hindering innovation, and 

will handicap our global leadership. This is particularly important now so that the growing 

advanced reactor industry can flourish. 

Finally, T must encourage federal agencies to be cautious with development or demonstration 

investments to avoid ones that arc out of touch with the market. Unfortunately, these investments 

can to !low "pet project" preferences or projects with strong lobby support, instead of following 

the market, which could severely damage the rising advanced reactor movement by sending false 

and incorrect market signals. We all have a vector on getting to market and achieving cost 

5 
21 

competitiveness, while producing emission-free power at a global scale. Getting there will be 

hard, but this is one of the most promising times for nuclear since the birth of the industry. 

Regulatory Challcngesand Oppot_1unitics 

In general, the regulatory challenges to advanced reactor commercialization efforts have been 

overstated. While there are challenges, I must emphasize that the widely-held view that advanced 

reactors cannot be licensed today is mistaken. W c arc fonnally engaged in pre-application 

activities with the NRC and we have found clear licensing pathways for our technology. However, 

there is room lor improvement and modernization. 

Recent progress made by the NRC to support advanced reactor licensing is yielding value. The 

DOE's work to develop advanced reactor design criteria and other issues will have a substantial 

effect on advanced reactor licensing. furthermore, recent NRC initiatives to use a core team 

review approach and safety focused reviews will improve cost and schedule predictability. 

I also encourage updating security and slatTing requirements so they arc "right-sized" to reactor 

size and type. furthermore, future regulatory reforms should yield requirements and cost burdens 

that rcf1cct reactor size and safety performance. I would also like to acknowledge the work 

NuScale has done to address many of the challenges that advanced reactor developers face. The 

work they have done has helped pave the way on many issues, and we hope to build on this trend 

and pave the way forward for advanced reactor commercialization. 

Closing Thoughts 

Advanced reactor development has grown signitlcantly in the past decade, particularly in the last 

five years, and these eflorts are better equipped than ever to bring these technologies to market. 

Advances in computational modeling and simulation, along with an injection of talented, creative, 

and hungry young engineers into the nuclear industry have fueled much of this growth. Federal 

efforts to attract students into nuclear engineering programs over the last decade are paying 

dividends, and there is more to come. Furthermore, advanced reactor research and development 

activities sponsored by the DOE and the national laboratories over the past few decades have 

demonstrated some of the core technologies that many of these startups and larger companies arc 

working to commercialize. 

Innovation in nuclear is proceeding at a pace reminiscent of the early days of nuclear power, with 

dozens of startups and over $1 billion in private capital at work developing the future of energy 

technologies. The United States is still the global leader in nuclear technology, and we have taken 

steps to cultivate this growing movement, but there is still more to be done to remove outdated 

obstacles, and overcome hurdles that slow the growth of this industry. Furthcnnore, we must be 

mindful of intcmational competition. China and Russia arc investing heavily to develop advanced 

6 
22 

nuclear technologies, and we cannot aftord to fall behind. Our national capacity to innovate, 

combined with our national capabilities to research and develop give us tremendous advantages. 

We have a unique opportunity in front of us. lfwc seize it, we can lead the world in a clean energy 

transition powered by advanced reactors that can mitigate the effects of climate change, bring 

affordable, reliable, emission-free energy to the billions without it, and support the growth of an 

entirely new technology and manufacturing workforce. Furthermore, these technologies can fuel 

mankind's ambitions of navigating the stars. We need energy to explore the heavens, and nuclear 

energy will power future trips to our neighboring planets and beyond. I thank you for this 

opportunity to testify, and would be pleased to respond to any questions you might have today or 

in the future. 

7 
23 

Jacob DeWitte Biography 

Jacob DeWitte is the co-founder and CEO of Oklo, a Sunnyvale, CA based company developing 

and building small nuclear reactors. Jacob has been working with nuclear technology since his 

childhood, and has deep experience with nuclear reactor design and analysis. lie has worked 

with many advanced reactor designs including sodium fast reactors, molten salt reactors, and 

next-generation PWRs. Jacob has also been involved with front-end and back-end nuclear fuel 

cycle technology development and analysis. Jacob worked on the reactor design efforts on a 

waste consuming molten salt reactor at the University of Florida, as well as the core design at GE 

for their PRISM sodium cooled fast reactor. Jacob also has experience working with 

experimental irradiation testing facilities during his time at Sandia National Labs where he was 

able to work with a fast pulse reactor. Jacob has also worked on nuclear facility licensing and 

early stage procurement during his time at Urcnco US. Jacob is originally from Albuquerque, 

NM. He earned his BS in nuclear engineering from the University of Florida and his SM and 

PhD in nuclear engineering at MIT. 
24 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Dr. DeWitte. 

And Dr. Sant. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. GAURAV N. SANT, 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND HENRY SAMUELI FELLOW, 

DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING, 

HENRY SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING 

AND APPLIED SCIENCE, 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES (UCLA) 

Mr. SANT. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson, and Members of the Committee for inviting me to appear before you as you review private sector leadership in next-generation 

energy technology to increase efficiency, environmental benefits 

and consumer savings, and review associated research and regulatory hurdles. 

As requested by the Committee, I am focusing my testimony on 

research that we’ve been engaged in that seeks to convert carbon 

dioxide (CO2) into a novel building material, CO2NCRETE, with 

CO2 at the front. The views expressed herein are my own, and do 

not necessarily represent those of UCLA. In brief, I’m an Associate 

Professor and Henry Samueli Fellow in the Henry Samueli School 

of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of California, 

Los Angeles. I’m a civil engineer, and a materials scientist with 

broad ranging expertise in materials synthesis, characterization 

and simulation. 

My testimony today can be summarized as follows starting with 

the motivation. Electricity generation from coal-fired power plants 

alone represents about 25 percent of CO2 emissions from the 

United States. It’s about 1.2 billion tons of CO2 emitted in 2016. 

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been proposed as a solution 

to mitigate CO2 emissions caused by industrial activities. However, 

CCS is not always viable due to issues with high cost, uncertainty 

in the permanence of the sequestration solution, and/or the lack of 

suitable geological features in the local vicinity where CCS can be 

achieved. Therefore, it is necessary to identify and create new pathways for the beneficial utilization of CO2 while simultaneously 

yielding a permanent CCS solution. 

A novel approach to mitigate CO2 emissions is by upcycling or 

beneficially utilizing industrial wastes that may be in the form of 

solids, liquids, or vapors to create new materials, for example, 

CO2NCRETE. As an example, in the case of flue gas-borne CO2, this is accomplished by converting gas borne CO2 by mineralization 

into stable carbonate compounds which may offer cementitious 

character into building materials. Not only do such innovative technologies yield environmental benefits, but they also have the potential to reduce the environmental impact of the construction sector 

as follows. The production of ordinary Portland cement—the primary binding agent used in traditional concrete—results in nearly 

nine percent of global CO2 emissions. For example, nearly .9 tons 

of carbon dioxide are emitted per ton of OPC produced. Therefore, 

the development of new cementation agents that take up CO2 will 

help reduce the CO2 emissions associated with OPC and concrete) 

production. 
25 

With respect to material recycling, the simultaneous reuse of 

CO2 and industrial byproducts—solid wastes—resulting from coal 

combustion creates a new paradigm in waste-to-resource recycling 

of materials. This creates a circular economy paradigm between the 

energy and construction sectors and thus greatly enhances the sustainability metrics of both industries. The upcycling process that 

we’ve proposed and demonstrated is accomplished by contacting 

calcium hydroxide with flue gas-borne CO2. Such calcium hydroxide 

or portlandite can be secured by calcining limestone and hydrating 

the lime that results or by leaching calcium species from alkaline 

industrial wastes such as slags and coal combustion residuals. Following combination with fine and coarse mineral aggregates, chemical additives, water, and suitable binding agents if needed—similar to traditional concrete—this mixture containing calcium hydroxide forms a slurry that can be shaped into common construction 

elements, such as beams, columns, and slabs. Importantly, the 

upcycled concrete production process is designed to bolt-on to large 

point-source CO2 emitters including petrochemical facilities, coaland natural gas-fired power plants, and cement plants. In each 

case, emitted flue gas is used to both provide both waste heat to 

hasten chemical reactions, and to provide CO2 to ensure mineralization without imposing any additional need for emissions control. The process cycle is being designed for scalable operations to 

accelerate the R&D pathway towards pilot-scale trials, technology 

commercialization and deployment. 

CO2NCRETE offers a transformative route for the beneficial utilization of flue gas-borne CO2 in the cementation cycle. This creates 

pathways to produce construction materials with up to 50 percent 

or lower carbon dioxide intensity than ordinary Portland cement. 

Furthermore, by creating a robust CO2 and solid waste offtake 

partnership between the energy and the construction sectors, the 

outcomes of this work create new sectoral synergies which would 

be difficult to realize otherwise. Significantly, this CO2 upcycling 

approach can reduce the environmental impact of electricity generation from fossil fuels, while simultaneously advancing the materials, methods and processes utilized by the construction sector. 

Financial support secured from federal agencies including the 

Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, and the 

National Science Foundation has been instrumental in enabling 

our work. The support of federal agencies such as those noted 

above, and others, is critical for enabling basic and applied R&D, 

technology creation and development. Broadly, with significant 

competitive international investments in R&D around the world, 

federal support of basic and applied R&D, in core and emerging domains such as CO2 utilization and reuse is more important now 

than ever. This is because federal R&D support is vital to enable 

the creation of knowledge and technology within universities and 

national laboratories, the reservoirs of knowledge that have ensured U.S. intellectual leadership globally. 

Furthermore, federal support of R&D is especially important in 

the case of technologies which benefit conventional industries 

which are unlikely to being offshored, for example, electricity generation and the construction sector, which feature reduced appetite 

for technical and commercial risk due to uncertainty in revenue, 
26 

profit pressures, regulatory and compliance burdens, or high costs 

associated with the development of greenfield facilities with long 

operating horizons. Therefore, it becomes necessary for the government to underwrite a larger proportion of the costs associated with 

R&D that has the potential to benefit such industries, and in turn, 

the general public, until sufficient technology maturity is achieved. 

However, once such maturity is achieved, and industry is assured of the commercial value and potential of new technology, it 

is expected that industry will take over and accelerate the residual 

R&D pathway including commercial trials that results in market 

penetration, and diffusion of new technology. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify on this important 

topic. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Sant follows:] 
27 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE AND TECHNOLOGY 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

JULY 19,2017 

CARBON UPCYCLING: TURNING CARBON DIOXIDE (C02) INTO C01NCRETE 

WRITTEN TESTIMONY: 

GAURA V N. SANT 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND HENRY SAMUEL! FELLOW: CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL 

ENGINEERING, MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, AND THE CALIFORNIA 

NANOSYSTEMS INSTITUTE 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. LOS ANGELES (UCLA) 

Introduction 

Thank you. Chairman Smith. Ranking Member Johnson and Members of the Committee for inviting me 

to appear before you as you review private sector leadership in next generation energy technology to 

increase efficiency. environmental benefits and consumer savings. and associated research and regulatory 

hurdles. As requested by the committee. I am focusing my testimony on research that we have been 

engaged in that seeks to convert carbon dioxide (CO,) into a novel building material. C02NCRETEu 

The views expressed herein are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of UCLA. 

lam an Associate Professor and Henry Samueli Fellow in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and 

Applied Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I am a civil engineer. and a 

materials scientist with broad ranging expet1ise in materials synthesis, characterization and simulation-' 

Summary 

My testimony today can be summarized as follows: 

Motivation: Electricity generation from coal-fired power plants alone represents 25% or co, emissions 

tl·om the United States (1.2 billion tons of CO, emitted in 2016) 4 Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has 

been proposed as a solution to mitigate C02 emissions caused by industrial acti-vities. 5 Howe\-eL CCS is 

not always viable due to: (i) its high cost. (ii) uncertainty in the permanence of the sequestration solution, 

and/or. (iii) the lack of suitable geological features in the local vicinity where CCS can be achieved.'.i·' 

Therefore, it is necessary to identify and create new pathways for the beneficial utilization of CO: while 

simultaneously yielding a permanent CCS solution. 

1 Vance. K.: Falzone. G.: Pignatelli. l.: Bauchy.l'v1.: Bu!onis. M.: Sant. G.Jnd. Fng. Chem. Res. 2015. 5-I (36). R908-8918. 

n Ku\ichcnko. \J :Ere ira. E. Carbon Capture and Storage in on Barriers to Deplo.rmcnt: 

Energ) and :-::c~,;tor Bonrd Discussion Paper. "No. 25: 7 l3achu. S. and Hunagement 2000. -II (9). 953-970. 

Page I 
28 

Technical approach: A novel approach to mitigate CO, emissions is by upcvcling or beneficially 

utilizing industrial wastes that may be in the form of solids, liquids, or vapors to create new materials, 

e.g,, CO,NCRETE. As an example, in the case oft1ue gas borne C02, this is accomplished by converting 

gas borne CO, (Le., by mineralization'") into stable carbonate compounds which may offer cementitious 

character into building materials. Not only do such innovative technologies yield environmental benefits, 

but they also have the potential to reduce the environmental impact of the construction sector as follows: 

OPC production: The production of ordinary portland cement (OPC)- the primary binding agent 

used in traditional concrete results in nearly 9% of global CO, emissions (N.B.: 0.9t of CO, are 

emitted per ton of OPC produced). 1

'l.l' Therefore, the development of new cementation agents that 

take-up CO, will help reduce the CO, emissions associated with OPC (and concrete) production, and 

Marcrial reqc!ing: The simultaneous reuse of CO, and industrial byproducts (solid v.astes) resulting 

11·om coal combustion creates a new paradigm in waste-to-resource recycling of materials. This 

creates a circular economy"'' paradigm between the energy and construction sectors and thus great!) 

enhances the sustainability metrics of both industries. 

The upcycling process is accomplished by contacting calcium hydroxide (Ca(OHJ, also known as 

portlandite) with flue gas borne CO,. Such portlanditc may be secttred by: (a) calcining limestone and 

hydrating the lime that results,"'' or (b) by leaching calcium 1i·om alkaline industrial wastes such 

as slags and coal combustion residuals to produce Ca(OHh. Following combination with fine and 

coarse mineral aggregates, chemical additives, water, and suitable binding agents (if needed)- similar to 

traditional concrete- this mixture containing Ca(OH), forms a slurry that can be shaped into common 

construction elements, such as beams. columns. and slabs. 

The upcycled concrete (CO,NCRETE) production process is designed to "bolt-on" to large point-source 

co, emitters including: petrochemical facilities, coal- and natural gas-tired power plants, and cement 

plants. In each case, emitted tlue gas is used to both provide waste heat to hasten chemical reactions. and 

to provide C02 to ensme mineralization without imposing any additional need for emissions control. The 

process cycle is being designed for scalable operations to accelerate the R&D pathway towards pilot-scale 

trials, technology commercialization and deployment. 

Impacts and benefits: CO,NCRCTE offers a transformativc route for the beneficial utilization of flue gas 

borne CO, in the cementation cycle. This creates pathways to produce construction materials with up to 

50% or lower C02 intensity than opc.u.>s Furthermore. by creating a robust CO, (and solid waste) on: 

take partnership between the energy and construction sectors, the outcomes of this work create new 

sectoral synergies which would be difficult to realize otherwise. Significantly, this C02 upcyc!ing 

3 Moorehl'ad. D. ft Cement and Conaete Research 1986. 

'l Rui~:-Agudo, E.: Kudla~L. K.: Putnis. C. V.: Putnis. A.: Ro<lrwucz·N<IVa<rro. C. F11riron. Sci. Tee/mol. 201J . ../.7 t 19). I 1342-

IIJ49_ 

111 Gartner. E. Cement ond ("oncrl!!e Resuan .. :h 200-t. 3../ (9}. I ,!89-1498. 

ll Miller. S.A .. I !orvat!L A. and Monteiro. P. J. Fm·ironmrmal Research !_etten' 2016. /1 {7). 07-!029. 12 StahcL W. R. ,\(1/w·c 2016.531 435-438. 1

' Ghisellini, P.; Cia!ani. C.: S. Juurno! of Cleaner Production 2016. I 1-1. 11-·-32. 

~~ Oates. J. A. H. Lime and limestone· production and uses: Wiley-VCH: Weinhcim. 1998. 

2nd eel.; !nt<.:rsciencc Publishers, J 980. 

M.: Charkt. L. .Journal (~{1/o::ardous .\fataials 2009. 16! (2). 

<7 

" 

.\lo!cria!s 2002.93 {3). J21··329. 

Blog: Green {"02NCRETE(TM) f(H· Sustainablt> Construction 

Page 2 
29 

approach can reduce the environmental impact of electricity generation from fossil fuels, while 

simultaneously advancing the materials. methods and processes utilized hy the construction sector. 

The Role of Federal R&D Support 

Financial support secured from federal agencies including the: (i) Department of Energy, (ii) Department 

of Transportation, and, (iii) National Science Foundation has been instrumental in enabling our work. The 

support of federal agencies such as those noted above, and others, is critical f(lr enabling basic and 

applied R&D, technology creation and development. Broadly, "·ith significant (competitive) international 

investments in R&D around the world. federal support of basic and applied R&D, in core and emerging 

domains such as CO, utilization and reuse is more important now than ever. This is because federal R&D 

support is vital to enable the continued creation of knowledge and technology- within universities. and 

national laboratories the reservoirs of knowledge that have ensured U.S. intellectual leadership globally. 

Furthermore, federal support of R&D is especially important in the case of technologies which benefit 

conventional industries which are unlikely to being offshored- e.g., fossil-fuel based electricity 

generation. and the construction sector which feature reduced appetite for technical and commercial risk 

due to uncertainty in revenue, profit pressures. substantial regulatory and compliance burdens, and/or very 

high costs associated with the development of greenfield facilities with long operating horizons. 

Theref(,re, it becomes necessary for the government to unden,rite a larger proportion of the costs 

associated with R&D that has the potential to benefit such industries. and in turn, the general public. until 

sufficient (technology) maturity is achieved. 

However, once such maturity is achieved, and industry is assured of the commercial value and potential 

of new technology, it is expected that industry will take-over and accelerate the residual R&D pathway 

including commercial trials that results in market penetration, and diffusion of new technology. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify on this important topic. 

Page 3 
30 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE ANO TECHNOLOGY 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

JULY 19,2017 

CARBON UPCYCL!NG: TURNING CARBON DIOXIDE (CO,) INTO CO,NCRETE 

SHORT NARRATIVE BIOGRAPI !Y: 

GAURAVN.SANT 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND HENRY SAMUEL! FELLOW: CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL 

ENGINEERING, MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, AND THE CALIFORNIA 

NANOSYSTEMS INSTITUTE 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. LOS ANGELES (UCLA) 

Gaurav Sant is Associate Pro lessor and llenry Samueli Fellow in the Departments of Civil and 

Environmental Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering and a member of the California 

Nanosystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). 

He earned his B.S.C.E (2006), M.S.C.E (2007) and Ph.D. (2009) in civil engineering from Purdue 

University in West Lafayette. IN and spent a post-doctoral year (2010) at the Ecole Polytechnique 

Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Svv itzerland. 

Gaurav has authored over I 00 papers in peer-reviewed journals. and conference publications. Gaurav has 

been a recipient of the: CAREER Award (20!3), Hellman Fellowship (2013), Walter P. Moore Jr .. 

faculty Achievement A ward (20 16) and J.-C. Roumain Innovation in Concrete Award (20 16) and the 

Gustavo Collonnetti Medal (20 17). 

Gaurav's research is focused on better understanding the relationships between the composition. structure 

and propet1ies of inorganic structural materials including: natural and synthetic minerals. concrete, 

glasses. alloys, and bio-materials. He has special expertise in developing new pathways f(w the beneficial 

utilization of carbon dioxide (C02 ) in construction materials. 

Gaurav is a member oft he American Concrete Institute. ASTM International. RILEM: The International 

Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials. Systems and Structures, the American 

Ceramic Society. and the American Chemical Society. 

Page I 
31 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Dr. Sant. 

And Dr. Venky. 

TESTIMONY OFDR. VENKY NARAYANAMURTI, 

BENJAMIN PEIRCE RESEARCH PROFESSOR 

OF TECHNOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, 

JOHN A. PAULSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING 

AND APPLIED SCIENCES, HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Honorable 

Minority Leader Johnson, and Members of the House Space, 

Science and Technology Committee. Thank you for this opportunity 

to speak about the role of—— 

Chairman SMITH. Is your mic on? There we go. 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. Can you hear me now? 

Chairman SMITH. Yes. Thank you. 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Thank you for the opportunity to speak 

about the role of public policy in energy innovation. 

My perspective comes from a lifetime of working in science and 

technology, first at AT&T Bell Laboratories, then in national labs, 

Sandia National Lab, and in academia as well as my recent research at the Harvard Kennedy School and my role on several committees of the National Academies and the American Academy of 

Arts and Sciences. 

I have three main points to make to you today. First, we must 

break down the false dichotomy between so-called basic and applied research. In my lexicon, there’s only word, research, and research must be scientific research, physics research, technology research, engineering research. 

Second, in energy alone, history has shown that sometimes engineering inventions precede detailed scientific understanding and 

sometimes new scientific discoveries lead to new engineering inventions. This creation of the steam engine 200 years ago by James 

Watt led to the industrial revolution long before the science of thermodynamics, the invention of the light bulb, Edison and transformers led to the field of electrical power engineering. On the 

other side, the scientific work of Einstein, which showed the connection between mass and energy, and the work of Enrico Fermi 

on nuclear fission led eventually to nuclear power. 

My second point is that government has an important role in fostering energy innovation done in the proper way, which couples the 

desire to understand and the desire to create new things. That’s 

what America is about, in my view. If you do not combine so-called 

basic and applied research, it’s a missed opportunity. We learn by 

doing. Everything I do in class, we learn by doing. The private sector in energy in particular does not invest appropriately long-term 

R&D. In fact, that’s through widely of the American economy because of the global competition and because the fruits of this research cannot be easily captured because of the risks and the 

breadth of those values. This leads to valleys of death which government funding is needed to overcome. The early stage I, which 

is where I’m expert of transformative, it really is important because in fact that—the risks are huge but the gains also can be 
32 

very large, high risk, high reward, as Honorable Johnson mentioned. 

Technology transfer, secondly, is a body contact support. It requires interactions, collaboration between actors from places like 

the national labs, universities, and the private sector. 

I now want to turn to a few points on the role of the U.S. Department of Energy, which has its mission general science as well as 

energy and national security. In the energy space, Department of 

Energy investments in the past have led to major technological advances such as the shale gas revolution, which we are using the 

fruits of today. It was done in the 1980s when people at the DOE 

and the Gas Research Institute helped an entrepreneur by the 

name of Mitchell, Mitchell Energy. The big companies didn’t want 

to do it, and it was not of course cost-effective then but today it 

has become a huge effect here, and similarly, nuclear power, which 

has also been mentioned, and solar photovoltaics. This has often 

been done by the so-called applied offices in the DOE. The full potential of the Department of Energy’s work in this space can only 

be realized by further breaking down the boundaries between basic 

and applied research. Recent attempts to break down this boundary and the creation of interdisciplinary research efforts through 

energy Frontier Research Centers, Energy Innovation Hubs, and 

ARPA–E were, in my view, the steps in the right direction including the creation of a unified Under Secretary for Science and Energy. We do want to break down these barriers, and if I may be, 

as a respectful reminder, point to this Committee which also has 

responsibility for the National Science Foundation. Eric Block, who 

came from IBM and understood the industrial lab culture in the 

1980s, changed many of the NSF features in a very positive direction. He created physics frontier centers, he created science and 

technology centers, and he created engineering research centers, 

which have a 40-year history of great success and have been evaluated in books. The recent constructs at DOE in fact emulate them. 

Energy Innovation Hubs are like science and technology centers 

and like engineering research centers, and they deserve to be funded just as the physics frontier center. So this not against the basic 

research; it is how you keep the boundary. 

So I would like to say the great diversity and complexity in energy science and technology calls for a portfolio approach both in 

terms of content and management. I did not mention ARPA–E. 

ARPA–E is a slightly different construct, which where actually the 

program managers modeled like DARPA to actually go for the 

high-risk reward, and we have done studies on it which I can speak 

about later in questioning, which actually shows enormous effort 

which ARPA–E has also done. 

So in closing, I believe we are in a critical juncture and our 

choices today will have far-reaching consequences. I cannot overemphasize the importance of government support of energy innovation across the basic-applied divide and enhancing cooperation and 

collaboration between academic, national laboratories, and industry. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Narayanamurti follows:] 
33 

Written Testimony of 

Professor Venkatesh Narayanamurti 

Benjamin Peirce Research Professor of Technology and Public Policy, 

Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences 

and Harvard Kennedy School 

Harvard University 

venky@scas.harvard.cdu 

Before the 

House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

July 19,2017 
34 

Dear Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson, and distinguished Members of the Committee, 

Thank you for offering me the opportunity to submit testimony to the Committee. 1t is an honor to be 

able to offer my perspective on a topic that is of great importance to the national interest. 

My name is Venkatesh Narayanamurti. I am currently the Benjamin Peirce Research Professor of 

Technology and Public Policy at Harvard University. I was fonncrly the Dean of the Harvard John A. 

Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Dean of Physical Sciences at Harvard. From 

1992 to 1998 I served as Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California at Santa 

Barbara. 

From 1987 to 1992, 1 was Vice President of Research at Sandia National Laboratories. Much of my 

scientific research career was at the AT&T Bell Laboratories where l served first as llead of 

Semiconductor Electronics Research and then as Director of Solid State Electronics Research. It was 

in these roles that I came to understand the two key principles that underlie my testimony. Namely, 

that innovation is fostered when control over the research agenda resides as close as possible to the 

researchers in the lab: and that innovation is hindered by the traditional "linear model" that biti.rrcatcs 

research into categories of"basic" and "applied". 

My testimony also stems tl·om policy research 1 have conducted with fellow scholars at the Belfer 

Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School (IlKS). Our group has 

led research on supporting decisions about the optimal levels of DOE R&D investments in various 

energy technologies considering technology uncertainty, the structure and management of research 

institutions, and the linkage between DOE and the private sector. 

In addition. my recent service as Foreign Secretary (20 II to 2015) of the U.S. National Academy of 

Engineering, which involved many global interactions, has given me a broader view of R&D in an era 

of increased global competition. I currently serve on the Board of Directors of the American Academy 

of Arts and Sciences and co-chaired its 2013 report, "ARISE U: Unleashing America's Research & 

Innovation Enterprise." 1 was also a member of the American Academy's panel for its 2014 report. 

"Restoring the Foundation: The Vital Role of Research in Preserving the American Dream," cochaired by Norm Augustine and Neal Lane. 

This testimony was prepared in consultation with my colleagues with whom 1 have worked closely at 

the Harvard Kennedy School: Prof. Laura Diaz Anadon now at the University of Cambridge. Prof. 

Gabriel Chan now at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Amitai Bin-Nun now at Securing America's 

Future Energy, and Dr. Anna Goldstein. I also want to acknowledge the contributions of collaborators 

who have influenced my thinking over the years, including Dr. .JcffTsao at Sandia National 

Laboratories and Prof. Tolu Odumosu now at University of Virginia. 

2 
35 

Summary 

The DOE is unique among federal R&D agencies in its multiple missions: "General" Science, 

National Security, and Energy. 11 is a major fundcr of research in physical sciences and engineering, 

and it oversees 17 National Laboratories. In this testimony, I will concentrate on R&D for the energy 

mission of DOE. Specifically, I will emphasize the need for support for transdisciplinary research and 

better integration of research cffm1s across academia, government, and industry in the energy space. 

During my time as a researcher and research director at Bell Labs, Bell Labs produced major 

breakthroughs in semiconductor materials engineering that led to new scientific discoveries: these 

discoveries in tum enabled today's wireless and optical communication systems. The transformativc 

impact of R&D at Bell Labs provides an important lesson for DOE research management: the creation 

of new technology requires the close integration of activities typically classillcd as "basic research" 

and "applied research." The boundary between "basic" and "applied'' research is arbitrary and 

counterproductive. The processes of discovery and invention do not happen in isolation-the two 

must be holistically managed to maximize the societal benetlt of research investments. 

Strengthening federal energy R&D investments is especially important. given the low levels of private 

investment in energy R&D and the large potential for economic growth it·om new and improved 

energy technologies. DOE must continue to adopt a portfolio strategy that includes a diverse range of 

research management approaches, in addition to a diverse set of technologies. Reducing funding for 

so-called "applied" research through EERE and the other technology offices would severely undercut 

the ability of DOE-funded research to address energy goals and US competitiveness. DOE has taken 

several positive steps over the last I 0 years to more tightly integrate science and engineering research 

activities across the "basic''i"applicd" research divide, including the creation of ARPA-E. Continued 

efforts along these lines should be encouraged. 

Opportunities exist to reform DOE's approach to energy R&D investment so that new discoveries and 

new inventions can more rapidly be transferred to the private sector. DOE's ability to advance its 

mission is hindered by the "stovepiping" of research funding streams separately administered by the 

Office of Science and the "applied" energy offices and limitations to National Lab director discretion. 

Changes in management will decrease overhead costs and improve the etTeetiveness of R&D funds at 

DOE: any funding adjustments have to be made with a scalpel, not an axe. 

Suggested Readings 

I. National Research Council (2007), ''Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and 

Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future." 

2. American Academy of Arts & Sciences (20 13), "ARISE II: Unleashing America's Research 

and Innovation Enterprise.'' 

3. Narayanamurti, V., Odurnosu, T. (2016), Cycles of invention and Discoven•: Rethinking the 

Endless Frontier, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, and references cited therein. 

4. Anadon, L. D., Bunn, M., & Narayanamurti, V. (Eds.). (2014). Yi'ansforming US Energ)' 

innovation. Cambridge University Press. 

5. Anadtm, L. D., Chan, G., Bin-Nun, A. Y., & Narayanarnurti, V. (2016). The pressing energy 

innovation challenge of the US National Laboratories. Nature Energl·. I, 16 I 17. 

3 
36 

Scholars and practitioners of science and technology have largely moved past the once dominant 

"linear model" of innovation, in which "basic" research is thought to precede "applied" 

research. Contemporary research describes the process of technological innovation with a "connected 

R&D" modeL where innovation is not separated into "basic" and "applied" activities, but rather is one 

continuous activity-space; activities normally classified as "applied'' and "basic" arc mutually 

reinforcing and chronologically sequenced in a variety of ways. This connected model also 

emphasizes the knowledge feedback that develops when technologies are put into practical 

application. Under this new paradigm. which is considered a better description of how engineers and 

scientists actually operate, new inventions in the domain of engineering enable deeper understanding 

in the domain of science with a comparable frequency to the reverse direction ofinf1uenceL' 

History abounds with examples of the interdependence of science and engineering, especially in 

energy. The invention by James Watt of the steam engine led to the scientific theory of 

thermodynamics. The invention of the light bulb by Edison and the work of Tesla and Westinghouse 

on transfonncrs t()r long distance electricity transmission led to the emergence of the field of electrical 

engineering for power generation. Einstein's seminal scientific work on relativity eventually led to the 

discovery of nuclear fission and the development of nuclear power. America's growth as an economic 

superpower is in many ways connected to its fforlticr spirit and superior ability to exploit the virtuous 

cycle of scientific discovery and engineering inventions to meet societal goals. This spirit is still alive 

and well in some places (e.g. the information technology sector), and yet the level of investment 

necessary to advance both science and technology in the energy space is prohibitively large for the 

self-funded "tinkerer." 

The unity or "basic" and '·applied" research activities was a major !'actor in the highly 

productive corporate R&D activities in the 20" century. Examples abound from AT&T Bell Labs. 

IBM. Xerox. DuPont and General Electric. My own experience at Bell Labs, alongside the history of 

the invention of the transistor and the discovery of the transistor effect. illustrates the importance of 

breaking down barriers between science and engineering. In the I 970's and 19RO's. Bell Labs made 

enormous strides in artificially-tailored thin-film materials. which led to new scientific discoveries in 

semiconductor quantum physics. These advances led simu/taneousit' to the creation of devices like 

high-mobility transistors. which are in every cell phone, and tiny communications lasers, which allow 

high speed tlbcr optic communications across the globe. 

Since my time at Bell Labs, corporate R&D has shifted dramatically toward only those R&D 

activities that can produce immediate returns.' This leaves the public sector with the responsibility 

to support long-term. mission-focused R&D funding. And yet, mission-focused govcmmcnt R&D 

programs must not be limited to only funding science that is remote fi·orn applications. In order to 

achieve long-term technological progress, the processes of discovering new knowledge and inventing 

new technology must be coupled. The scientists and engineers, particularly those working on energyrelated topics, in U.S. universities and national labs depend on public funding to be able to create the 

1 Narayanamurti, V, Odumo::-.u, T. (20 16). Cych•s q( fm•ention and Disco\'e/~1': Rethinking the End! us.'!· Frontier. 

Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 2 American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2013), ''Arise It: Unleashing America's Research and Innovation 

Enterprise Transfonning U.S. Energy Innovation." 

'Arora A .. Belcnzon S .. Patacconi A. (20 I 5), "Killing the Golden Goose'? The Decline of Science in Corporate 

R&D." NBC.R Working Paper Series. 20902. 

4 
37 

new ideas that will support the nation's economic growth, security, and environmental well-being in 

the future. 

In addition to the critical responsibility for funding research, government-sponsored programs 

must also SUilport exploratory technology development. When new knowledge is derived t!·om 

publicly-funded research, it must be shepherded across the "valley of death" before it 1inds an 

application suitable for transition to private sector development. The role of the government is to 

construct a bridge bet\vccn scientists and engineers thereby creating both new ideas and new private 

companies focused on short-term product markets. Exactly how Lrr this support should continue in the 

maturation of any given technology, from exploratory development toward manufacture and 

deployment, can be argued, but it is clear that government has an important role to play in supporting 

technologies across the "valley of death." 

While the argument I have outlined above for public support throughout the innovation cycle is 

true for many areas of technology, il is especially urgent in the case of energy innovation. The 

markets for energy technologies arc generally large. highly regulated, and based on long-lived 

hardware and infrastructure. Additionally, electricity and fuels--the main products of the energy 

sector--are sold as homogeneous commodities, making it hard to charge a premium for new \\'ays of 

producing them. Partly as a result of these considerations, the incentive for private actors to invest in 

innovation is particularly low for energy technologies: the energy sector has one of the lowest rates of 

innovation per unit of revenue in any sector, both in the U.S." and globally-' At the same time, the 

potential social bcnetits from energy innovation arc particularly high, as explained in the followiug 

section. 

a critical role in U.S. innovation 

The United States is facing both a set of challenges and opportunities related to its energy 

system. The challenges arc global in nature and cut across issues of national security, economic 

growth. and environmental protection. Despite rapid increases in domestic crude oil production over 

the last six years, in 2016, the United States spent $7.3 trillion on oil imports ti·om foreign countries.'' 

In 2005, the most recent year a comprehensive assessment was conducted. the human health and 

environmental impacts of energy use in the United States (excluding any effect of climate change), 

was $120 billion.' Meanwhile, there arc opportunities associated with our evolving energy system; the 

energy sector created 300,000 new jobs in 2016, representing 14%, of all job creation in the United 

States-' This was led by 25% growth in employmcut in the solar sector and 32% growth in the wind 

sector. 

The United States has entered an unprecedented era of globalization and economic competition. 

Achieving economic prosperity in this new era will require American companies to outcompctc 

companies in an increasing number of countries around the world. Other countries arc ramping up 

4 The Breakthrough Institute (2011). "Bridging the Clean Valleys of Death." 5 The Global Energy Asse5sment (20 l2). Chapter :!4: the Ener._r::r Technology Innovation s:rstcm 

"'U.S. Census Bureau, Economic Indicators Division. https:f/\vww.ccnsus.gov/forcigntradcistatisticslhistoricallperr.pdf 

7 U.S. National Research Council (2010). f!iddcn Cost\' oj'Ene1;~e<-. 

'U.S. Department of Energy (2017). "U.S. Energy and Employment Report." 
38 

their public support for energy R&D 9 If the United States withdraws support for energy R&D 

programs, China, Germany, Japan, and others will seize the opportunity to lead global markets in new 

technologies. Meanwhile, innovation is a fundamental driver of economic vitality in cvety 

Congressional district in the country. 10 Supporting innovation at the federal \cvcl will create economic 

opportunities nationwide and ensure that American companies have access to the most advanced 

inventions and discoveries. 

To promote competitiveness of American companies, public sector R&D investments must be at 

least sustained. At a national level, there arc increasing rctums to innovation, meaning that the 

companies and countries that gain initial advantage in a technological area are much more likely to 

increase their advantage, while those who are behind tend to h1ll further hchind. For example, a 

country with a technological advantage in new forms of energy production can usc this advantage to 

capture market share and push out other countries, attracting further follow-on innovation by 

investors. Thus, early technological advantage, if sustained through strategic investments, begets 

further technological advantage in areas that build on the initial technology as catching up becomes 

harder and harder. 

Energy R&D funding has higher economic returns than many other forms of investment. There 

is considerable evidence that DOE energy R&D investment has stimulated additional private 

investment, serving as a catalyst for greater overall innovation.''·" Several prominent studies by 

experts, IJ.t 4 bipartisan groups,'' and business leaders 11' over the past couple of decades have called for 

significantly greater U.S. government spending on energy R&D. These studies have concluded that 

there would be significant benefits to the U.S. economy of increasing energy R&D. It has been 

estimated that the economic retums to increasing energy R&D by DOE arc very significant and would 

still be positive if funding were increased by a factor of 10. 17 

Inconsistent support for DOE R&D programs has led to budget fluctuations that undermine the 

effectiveness of R&D investments and should be avoided. Implementing effective energy R&D 

programs requires a minimum of a 3-5 year planning horizon so that technical expertise can be 

directed toward an innovation mission, physical scientific equipment can be prepared and t\tlly 

<) /\nadon, LD (2012). ''Missions-oriented RD&D institutions in energy: a comparative analysis of China, the 

United Kingdom, and the United States." Research PoliC\· 41 (10), 1742-1756. 10 Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (2016). High-Tet'h Nation: How Technologicallnnoraliun 

Shapes America's 435 Congressional Dis·tricts. 11 Ho\vell. S. (2017). "~inancing Innovation: Evidence from R&D Grants:' The American Economic Rcvinr 107 

(4), 1136-1164. 

~ Chan, G. (20l5). Essays nn Energy Tcchnulof...'Y Jnnnvation Polhy. PhD thesis Ch. 2, Harvard University, 

Cambridge, MA. 13 PCAST (2010). "Report to the President on Accelerating the Pace of Change in Energy Technologies through 

an integrated federal energy policy." \Vashington D.C. President's Council of Advisors on Science and 

Technology. Executive Office of the President. 14 Anadon, LD, Chan, G, Lee, A. (2014). "Expanding. and improving targeting of, U.S. investment in energy 

innovation: an analytical appro:Jch.'' In Tran.~j(Jrming U.S Ene1gy Jnnovatiun. Eds. LD Amidon. M Bunn, V 

Naranayanamurti. Cambridge University Press. 

'' NCEP (1004). "Ending the energy stalemate. A bipartisan strategy to meet America's energy challenges." 

\Vashington D.C. The National Commission on Energy Policy. 1

'' American Energy Innovation Council. (2017). "The Power of Innovation: Inventing the Future." 

" Chan. G, Anadon, LD. (20 16 ). "Improving Decision Making for Public R&D Investment in Energy: Utilizing 

Expert Elicitation in Parametric Models." EPRG Working Paper 1631 and Cambridge Working Paper in 

Economics l6S2. University of Cambridge. hD_;~: \\ \~ \Y~ ~PL~~J:..>:~~l~~~:~DJ~~!l:_El-._ ~ J~=-

~,.~~tl'l•t t:r,1~~d":2Jl____!~_i __ 1_~\__,_~_L\:.':: .. U~\tl 

6 
39 

exploited, and the right people recruited, trained, and supported. The highly volatile DOE R&D 

appropriations for specific programs have made this kind of long-term planning more difficult." A 

more stable environment would increase the capability for program managers and scientists to pursue 

higher-risk, higher-reward research. Reducing volatility in funding could be achieved by following a 

multi-year high-level strategy, along the lines of those suggested by the first and second Quadrennial 

Technology Reviews.''' Programs should be evaluated on a regular basis, and those that underperform with regard to holistic measures of knowledge and technology advancement, as opposed to 

narrower metrics, should be cut. 

DOE energy R&D investments have advanced the scientific and technological frontier and are 

critical components of the U.S. national innovation system. These investments have made our 

economy more dynamic,havc created new technological opportunities for American companies to 

deliver services here and to compete internationally, and have driven employment in every region of 

the country. In particnlar, I would like to highlight the impact of two R&D funding sources within 

DOE: EERE and ARPA-E. 

EERE 

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) has existed under various names 

since the inception of the Department of Energy in 1978. Its strategic goals arc to accelerate the 

development and increase the usage of sustainable transportation, renewable energy, and energy 

efficiency technologies. It also seeks to promote the domestic manufacture of clean energy technology 

and increase grid resiliency, reliability, and efficiency. LERE is organized on the principle of 

investing in high-impact activities that could not be realized without its pmiicipation. To this end, 

EERE works with academia, industry, and national labs on R&D, technology validation, and reducing 

market barriers for new technologies. Importantly, it also oversees the National Renewable Energy 

Laboratory in Golden, Colorado (NREL), which hosts state-ol~the-art testing facilities and conducts 

research in renewable energy tcchnologics?n 

According to DOE, recent thitd-party evaluations tound that "an EERE taxpayer investment of $12 

billion has already yielded an estimated net economic benefit to the United States of more than $230 

billion, with an overall annual return on investment of more than 20%."" A 2001 report of the 

independent National Research Council (NRC) tound that DOE investments in energy efficiency 

research had yielded considerable net economic benefits, even apart from environmental benefits hom 

reduced pollution and national security benefits from reduced petroleum consumption. The NRC 

"Anadon, LD, Chan, G, Lee, A. (2014). !hid. 19 U.S. Department of Energy. "The Quadrennial Technology Rcvie\v." https://energy.go\'/under-sccrctaryscicncc-and-cnergy/quadrcnnial-tcchnology-rcvicw 

20 U.S. Department of Energy. "About us.'' https://energy.govlecrc/about-officc-cncrgy-efficiency-andrenewab!e-encrgy 

21 l.J.S. Department ofEncQ,'Y- "About the OtTice of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy" 

https:r/energy.gov/ecrc!about-office-energy-efficiency-and-rcncwahk-encrgy 

7 
40 

found that ti·om 197X to 2000, EERE invested $7 billion ( 1999 dollars), which yielded a total 

economic benefit of $30 billion by 2000." 

One example of EERE 's important role in the American energy innovation system is its SunShot 

Initiative. Since 20 ll, SunShot has funded R&D and demonstration projects with public and private 

partners; EERE's budget for solar technologies was S233 million in 2015. Meanwhile, the U.S. solar 

power industry has grown enormously due to continuous cost reductions for residential, commercial, 

and utility-scale phmovoltaic systems. The total power generated by solar photovoltaics in the U.S. 

increased by a factor of2,000 during the decade from 2007-201623 According to a 2017 DOE repot1, 

there were 374,000 solar industry jobs in the United States in 2016, slightly higher than the number of 

jobs in the natural gas sector (362,000 jobs) and more than twice that of coal sector jobs (160,000 

jobs).24 In terms of growth rates, the number of jobs created in 2016 by the U.S. solar power industry 

was nearly 5 times greater than the number of jobs created by the oil, natural gas, and coal sectors 

combined. 

As another example of EERE's impact, their Solid-State Lighting (SSL) program was instrumental in 

developing and promoting the adoption of solid-state lighting. The National Research Council 

performed an assessment of these investments and concluded, "DOE has done an impressive job in 

leveraging a relatively small level of funding to play a leading role nationally and internationally in 

stimulating the development of SSL."'' The progress in SSL development and deployment resulted 

from a combination of R&D and DOE efficiency standards established in the bipartisan Energy 

Independence and Security Act of 2007. According to the Department, the introduction of SSL could 

save Americans $50 billion annually in lighting costs by 2035_16 

ARPA-£ 

Modelled after DARPA to fund transfonnativc research, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for 

Energy (ARPA-E) was established by the America COMPETES Act of 2007 and funded by the 

Recovery Act (ARRA) of 2009. Its goal was to support technology ideas that were not being funded 

by the private sector or other DOE programs. ARPA-E has received broad bipartisan support. ln the 

FY 20 l 7 budget proceedings, 44 Democrats and 26 Republicans supported an amendment by Sen. 

Schatz to increase funding for ARPA-E; the House passed a similar amendment by Rep. Schiff by a 

voice votc27 ARPA-E's funding has been relatively stable over the past 3 years (2014-2016) at $280-

290 million/year, which constitutes about 7-8% of all DOE funding for energy research development 

and demonstration (RD&D)." 

22 National Research Council (200! ). Fncr..._f!.._r Research at DOE: YVas Tt Jrorth Tt? Encr&ry: Ef]lcicncy and Fossil 

1971! to](){}()_ 

Energy Information Administration (December 2016). "Electric Power Monthly: Table l.l.A. Net Generation 

!rom Renewable Sources: Total (All Sectors), 2006-Dccembcr 2016." 

·'·' Department of Energy (20 17). US. En erg)' and EmJJlormcnt ReJJort. 

National Research Council (20 13 ). Assess· men! qj'Adwmced Solid State Lighting. 

U.S. Department of Energy (20 17). "DOE Solid-State Lighting Program: Modest Investments, Extraordinary 

Impacts.'' https:.i/energy.gov/sites/prod/filcs/20 17/0 l/04/ssl-overview jan20 17.pdf 

"S.Amdt. 3R02 to S.!\mdt. 3ROito H.R. 2028 (Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies 

Appropriations Act, 2016) 

"Gallagher. KS and Anadon. LD. (2016). "DOE Budget Authority for Energy Research, Development, & 

Demonstration Database." Harvard Kennedy School, Belfer Center. Available at: 

l2ilJ2~~~\~.J~~L'\\ ·1,_~i~'I._l2l~_;_J:l_l).~_ij\'i_0_J_~_\ll..'-h;Jd ~,.:l-cJ L~~~ilY:-_•:L\l_0~_j__;;::--\.\l:·l·h-0_,: \-.' J ~:E!J.S:l_ll-lk'll 1\)] ]'-\ G!l~l: 
41 

One characteristic that differentiates ARPA-E from other DOE programs is the recruitment and 

empowerment of program managers on short-term contracts. Another is its direct reporting to the 

Secretary of Energy, rather than being embedded in the existing stmcturc of DOE. These features 

allow the agency to pursue priorities of long-term importance, in consultation with academics and 

industry professionals, without being subject to political interference on spending priorities. 

The goal of ARPA-E is to fund projects that may lead to long-term transformation in our energy 

system, to increase ctT!cicney, national security, and environmental protection. This year, a study 

from the National Academics found "clear indicators that ARPA-E is making progress toward 

achieving its statutory mission and goals.""' ARP .A-E has ftmded over 400 pr(ljects across 39 states, 

including 42%, from universities, 32% from small businesses, 14% from large businesses, 8% from 

Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, and 4% from non-profits. As of this year, the 

$1.5 billion in public funds that have been awarded through ARPA-E has attracted $1.8 billion in 

follow-on private investment. 31 

Because it is impossible to predict the long-term impact of R&D in advance, and given the long 

timescalcs involved in demonstrating and deploying energy technology, the full impact of ARPA-E 

investments will only be fully realized in a decade or two. However, the intemational push to find 

cost-effective ways ro accelerate energy innovation has provided impetus for researchers to start 

documenting what we know about the short-term success of .ARP A-E projects. 

Non-partisan evaluation and research. including the National Academics study, has begun to shed 

light on the results of ARPA-E's first several years. It appears that ARPA-E has funded a distinct 

portfolio of technology areas when compared to other DOE programs and the bulk of U.S. clean tech 

startups. In particular, .ARPA-E has invested a larger fraction of its startup-led projects in energy 

storage 33 Interestingly, previous work has identitied energy storage as a particularly high socialreturn opportunity for public energy R&D. 3

" Other results show that .ARP.A-E-fundcd projects arc 

more likely to produce a patent when compared to projects funded at a similar level elsewhere in 

DOE. This advantage may relate to the fact that ARP .A-E program directors are empowered to select 

risky projects for funding, and yet these projects perform as well as those with higher ratings from 

external reviewers on mctrics of publications. patents, and n1arket cngagement.JtBonvillian, W.B .. VanAtta, R. (2011 ). "ARPA-E and DARPA: applying the DARPA model to energy 

innovation." Journal q/Teclmo!ogy Transfer 36, 469 513. 

10 National Academics of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (2017). An Assessmen! ofARPA-E. The National 

Academies Press, \Vashington, D.C. 

" Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy (2017). "ARPA-E Projects Receive more than S I.R Billion in 

Private Follow-on Funding for Transformational Energy Technologies." 32 Grublcr, A, Wilson, C, Ncmct, GF. (2016). "Apples, oranges, and consistent comparisons of the temporal 

dynamics of energy transitions." Enr!J:._~y Research & Social Science 21: 18-25. 

Goldstein. AP, Doblinger, C. Anadon, LD. (2017). Unpublished research. Please contact Anna P. Goldstein 

anna goldstcinrtUhks.harvard.edu for more information. 

Chan, G. Anadon, LD. (2016). !hid. 

Goldstein, AP. Narayanamurti, V. (20 17). "Simultaneous Pursuit of Discovery and Invention in the l:.S. 

Department of Energy." Ongoing research. 

Goldstein, AP. Kcamcy, MJ. (]017). "Uncertainty and Individual Discretion in Allocating Research Funds ... 

Ongoing research. 
42 

These early indicators suggest that the institutional model of ARPA-E complements efforts elsewhere 

in the innovation system and should be preserved. Public investment in risky, uncertain. paradigmtransforming research is necessary in order to create new technologies which can grow into entirely 

new industries. The benefits to this type of research cannot be captured by any single company, so 

private investment is severely limited. 

To be most effective, DOE investments in energy R&D should be targeted at all stages of the 

innovation process. Unfortunately, the current DOE structure consists of siloes between artificially 

detem1ined budget categories based on outdated and counterproductive characterizations of "basic" 

and ''applied" research. In reality, the distinction between so-called ''basic" and ·'applied" research is 

impossible to determine, and the most transformativc R&D occurs with seamless interactions across 

disciplines of science and engineering. Therefore, making R&D budget decisions along this artificial 

line necessarily limits creativity and out-of-the-box thinking required for the creation of new 

technologies. 

Several programs created within OOE in recent years, including ARPA-E, have fostered 

transdisciplinary research and supported activities across the "basic-applied'' divide. These new 

programs serve an important function, while also functioning in combination to create a portfolio of 

different approaches. ·rhe Energy Innovation Hubs arc a set of 5-year awards made to a partnership 

between universities, national labs, and private companies formed around a specific technological 

mission. First funded in 2009, the Hubs were modeled after the Manhattan Project and the AT&T Bell 

Laboratories 37 Each of the current Hubs is based at a National Lab; extending this model outside of 

the labs may bring additional benefits. Also created in 2009. the Energy Frontier Research Centers 

(EFRC) arc smaller competitive awards, organized around "grand challenges" in energy-related 

research. In addition to a portfolio of management approaches. DOE must also support a diverse 

portfolio of programs spanning multiple primary energy resources, multiple technology readiness 

levels, and multiple timcscales for application of those technologies. 

To enhance the public benelits of DOE's energy R&O, a closer integration is needed between 

activities typically managed by the Office of Science and the technology oft1ccs. The appointment 

in 20!4 of a single Undersecretary for Science and Energy is a step in the right direction for DOE 

R&D management~ this organizational structure should be maintained. This move enabled the 

creation of crosscutting initiatives, wherein multi-office teams coordinate funding for a set of specific 

technical challenges, such as grid modernization. Further steps to improve the structure at the 

Assistant Secretary level may be needed. One possible improvement is to create a new "Office of 

Lnergy Research" that would combine activities across the full spectrum of energy-related research. 

This oftice could coordinate initiatives that fill existing departmental 1hnetions, including core 

research programs in science and engineering that span the range fl·om distant commercial relevance 

(e.g. condensed matter and atomic physics) to a strong technology focus (e.g. energy storage). An 

example of such initiatives can be tound at the National Science Foundation, which has since the 

1980's successfully fostered interdisciplinary research through Physics Frontier Centers, Science and 

17 Anadon, LD. (20 12). Ibid 

10 
43 

Technology Centers, and Engineering Research Centers; these efforts have been evaluated very 

positively in their impact over multiple decades." 

The DOE's 17 National Laboratories are major investments in long-term R&D in the physical 

sciences and engineering. The Jab system contributes significantly towards energy innovation, but 

could extract better outcomes with improved management structurcs3 " As discussed in our recent 

work,40 this would require increasing the funding for lab-directed research and development (LORD) 

at the margin to give more control ov.:r funds to those closer to the research. \Ve also recommend 

changes in the contracting procedures to provide incentives for collaboration between the labs and the 

private sector. including more support for technology transfer through the Lab-Embedded 

Entrepreneurship Program (e.g. Cyclotron Road), Sandia's efforts to promote entrepreneurship, and 

other initiatives. These issues require attention in parallel with other needed changes, in order to 

enhance the beneJits of publicly-funded DOE research tor the U.S. energy innovation system. 

[ 5. Concluding remarks J 

Congressional support for energy R&D investments from the DOE has a long bipartisan history 

that should continue. Thcst' public investments in energy R&D have been critical in addressing the 

energy security challenges faced by the country since the oil crisis of the 1970s. More recently, DO I:: 

R&D investments in all forms of energy hav·e paved the way for some of the most vibrant economic 

sectors in tenns of employment (in both fossil and renewable sectors). Sustaining strong public 

support tor DOE's energy R&D mission is more important now than ever, as our security. economic, 

and environmental challenges arc becoming more pressing for Americans everywhere and as other 

nations are working to position themselves as global leaders. After nearly 40 years of experience, 

independent studies of DOE R&D investments have shown that, in total, DOE R&D investments have 

strongly advanced American interests. Reducing these investments now would be a critical strategic 

failure. Instead, DOE R&D investment should be strengthened and managed more strategically 

through tighter integration of "basic'" and '"applied'' research, with concurrent organizational changes 

and greater engagement with the private sector. 

"CutTall, SC, Frauenheim, E, Perry, SJ, Hunter, EM. (2014). Organi:cd !nnomtion: A Blucpri!11jin· Rennl'ing 

Amcrh:a's Prospt'ri(r. Oxford University Press. 

"Glauthier, T. J. ct al. (2015). "Securing America's Fumre: Realizing the Potential of the DOE National 

Laboratories. Finn! Report of the Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories 

Vol. 1.'" 

'" Anadon LD, ChanG, Bin-nun A Y. Narayanamuni V. (2016). ''The Pressing Energy Innovation Challenge of 

the US National Laboratories," !Vature Ener~l.~', 16117. 

II 
44 

Short biography 

Vcnkatesh Narayanamurti is the Benjamin Peirce Research Professor of Technology and Public 

Policy in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the 

Kennedy School of Government. from 2009 to 2015 he was Benjamin Peirce Professor of 

Technology and Public Policy and Professor of Physics at Harvard and concurrently served as 

Director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at the Belfer Center of Science 

and International Atlairs, He was formerly the John L. Armstrong Professor and founding Dean 

of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Dean of Physical Sciences at Harvard. 

Previously he served as the Richard A. Auhll Professor and Dean of Engineering at the 

University of Califomia at Santa Barbara. Prior to that he was Vice President of Research at 

Sandia National Laboratories and Director of Solid State Electronics Research at Bell Labs. He 

obtained his PhD in Physics !rom Cornell University and has an Honorary Doctorate !1·01n 

Tohoku University. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 

the National Academy of Engineering and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, 

and a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement 

of Science, the IEEE, and the Indian Academy of Sciences. He has served on numerous advisory 

boards of the federal government, research universities, National Laboratories and industry. 

From 201 J to 2015 he served as the Foreign Secretary of the U.S. National Academy of 

Engineering. He currently serves on the Board of Directors and the Academic Council of the 

American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of more than 240 scientific papers in 

different areas of condensed matter and applied physics and the author of two books. He has 

written extensively and lectures widely on solid state, Energy technologies, computer, and 

communication technologies, and on the management of science, technology and public policy. 
45 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Dr. Venky. You certainly know 

how to message research. 

We’ll now go to Mr. Kumaraswamy. We look forward to your 

comments. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. KIRAN KUMARASWAMY, 

MARKET DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR, 

AES ENERGY STORAGE 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. Thank you, Chairman Smith and distinguished Members of the Committee. I’m honored to testify in front 

of you today on the topic of energy innovation and private sector 

leadership and commercializing new technologies. 

Innovation can and will transform the energy sector and in turn, 

people’s lives. Bringing change to the industry is part of our DNA 

at AES and, in many ways, is what we do best. AES was started 

35 years ago by two former government employees, Roger Sant and 

Dennis Bakke, who saw an opportunity in the emerging independent generation market and we continue to grow by innovating 

new solutions to serve emerging power sector needs. 

I think innovation is very different from invention. Invention is 

a new idea. Innovation is actually doing something with the idea 

or applying an existing idea in a new way to drive a greater impact. That means that to AES, innovation can happen not just 

through technology, but by thinking about business models differently or modifying market structures. It’s an approach we call 

applied innovation. 

There is no better example of our applied innovation approach 

than in our energy storage business. We’ve come far from where we 

started ten years ago in the energy storage business. Back then, 

battery based energy storage on the grid was experimental, and did 

not exist as a business opportunity. Today, it is a proven solution 

and is operating successfully across the country and in several 

global markets. We stand at the beginning of the next big scaling 

up, taking this vital technology to more customers, more countries, 

and more grids around the world. 

In the context of today’s discussion and applied innovation, it’s 

pretty important to understand how we got here. In 2007, AES Energy Storage was founded as a subsidiary of AES to carry forward 

our initial survey of advances in battery technology and power electronics. At the time, no one had designed a large-scale energy storage system using lithium-ion batteries. The conventional wisdom of 

the time was that batteries could not meet the challenges of utilityscale performance. As lithium-ion technology emerged, our team 

believed we had found useful business cases for battery-based energy storage systems 

We moved forward with designing and building the first megawatt-scale lithium-ion battery energy storage project. Several years 

later, with 20 projects now and 398 megawatts deployed and 

awarded across seven different countries globally, we’ve helped ensure more customers in more locations can benefit from energy 

storage. 

In 2014, in California, we demonstrated that batteries could compete successfully against peaking power plants, securing the 

world’s first power purchase agreements for energy storage to serve 
46 

a utility customer for 20 years, and still the largest contracted energy storage project in the world. 

Just last week, Siemens and AES announced we will join forces 

to create Fluence, a new global energy storage technology and services company that unites the scale, experience, and reach of its two 

parent companies. 

With the market at an inflection point, what did we, as a private 

company, learn about commercializing next-generation technologies 

in the power market? I’d like to make four points to the Committee. 

First, the existing power market is not designed to reward 

innovators, and many of the needs reside within the network without any capability for compensation. Many of the rules in the current power markets were put in place for traditional generation 

and do no fully account for technical and performance characteristics of advanced technologies like energy storage. It is important to 

remedy these regulatory concerns as soon as possible. The federal 

government has an important role to play here to ensure markets 

are fully competitive and have the policy in place to catch up with 

the technology. Otherwise, market rules set up several years ago 

become an unintended roadblock for commercializing energy storage. 

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission currently has a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking related to removing barriers for storage participation in wholesale power markets. These types of efforts that include reforming market regulations to enable storage 

to compete in markets should be accelerated. 

Second, on the topic of battery chemistry research, we believe 

that lithium ion is mature right now and private capital from large 

battery manufacturing companies is moving it forward at incredible 

speed and investment. The government should continue funding 

R&D on other early-stage battery chemistries that have the potential to achieve greater capabilities in the near future. 

Third, the national labs through the Department of Energy are 

doing a great job in advancing the modeling and visualization of 

benefits that energy storage brings to the grid. These are complex 

analytic simulations that require the use of state-of-the-art power 

market models and a high degree of computational rigor. The government should encourage and increase investments in the DOE 

and national labs to continue this important work. 

Finally, the last point that I would like to make is that the federal government should continue to provide technical assistance to 

storage project deployments, particularly for states and utilities 

that are considering their first projects but may be constrained by 

lack of technical experience. Through our experience in the energy 

storage business, we have found that deploying projects in the field 

is the best way to enhance learning among all stakeholders. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you again for the opportunity to testify 

today. I would like to invite you and the other Members of the 

Committee to visit any of our storage facilities in the United 

States. I am happy to take questions. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kumaraswamy follows:] 
47 

July 19, 2017 

Written Testimony of Kiran Kumaraswamy, Market Development Director of AES 

Energy Storage Before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Science, 

Space and Technology- Energy Innovation: Letting Technology Lead 

Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson, Vice Chairman Lucas, Vice 

Ranking Member Beyer and Distinguished Members of the Committee. I am honored to 

testify in front of you today on the topic of energy innovation and private sector 

leadership in commercializing new technologies. My name is Kiran Kumaraswamy - I 

am a Market Development Director of AES Energy Storage, a subsidiary of The AES 

Corporation, a Fortune 200 global energy company headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. 

AES provides affordable and sustainable energy in 17 countries around the world. 

Innovation can and will transform the energy sector and in turn, people's lives. 

Improving lives is our mission at AES and our 19,000 people around the world are 

energized by that mission every day. In a sector that is changing faster than ever in its 

history, innovation will be critical to solving society's most pressing challenges, 

improving the way people work and live, and providing access to cleaner electricity. 

Bringing change to the industry is part of our DNA at AES and, in many ways, is what 

we do best. AES was founded more than 35 years ago and we continue to grow by 

innovating new solutions to serve emerging power sector needs. We have helped 

create new emissions control technologies and biomass conversions, have built new 

efficient power generating stations, and we have brought thousands of megawatts of 

wind and solar to market. 

We think innovation is different from invention. Invention is a new idea. Innovation is 

actually doing something with the idea or applying an existing idea in a new way to drive 

a greater impact. That means that to AES, innovation can happen not just through 
48 

2 

technology, but by thinking about business models differently or modifying market 

structures. 

AES has been successful by applying proven technologies, tailoring them for the power 

sector, and innovating commercial models to bring dependable, cost-effective power to 

our customers. It's an approach we call applied innovation. Applied innovation is about 

addressing a market issue with a proven technology, typically borrowed from outside of 

our industry. These solutions, when applied to our industry, can completely shift the 

dynamics within a market. 

The smart application of technologies validated in other sectors removes the risk and 

speeds the cycle time to new and better, affordable solutions. AES leverages the 

capabilities of an established and proven supply chains from other industries to solve 

critical power system problems. Devising new applications of established technology 

gives AES and our customers the confidence that the technology is reliable. 

Energy Storage: An Example of Applied Innovation at AES 

There is no better example of our applied innovation approach than in our energy 

storage business. We are in the midst of a transition towards an increasingly renewable 

and decentralized energy system. Storage is playing a key role where it's already 

deployed in providing flexibility and resiliency, maximizing what our current 

infrastructure can deliver, and allowing us to more easily incorporate distributed 

generation onto the electric grid. 

We've come far from where we started. Ten years ago, battery based energy storage 

on the grid was experimental, and did not exist as a business opportunity. Today, it is a 

proven solution and is operating successfully across the country and in several 

overseas markets. We stand at the beginning of the next big scaling up - taking this 

vital technology to more customers, more countries, and more grids around the world. 

In the context of today's discussion and applied innovation, it's important to understand 

how we got here. 

In 2007, AES Energy Storage was founded as a subsidiary of AES to carry forward our 

initial survey of advances in battery technology and power electronics. We saw the 
49 

3 

opportunity to use these technologies to improve the flexibility and efficiency of electric 

grids while running power plants more efficiently. We were bullish on the potential for 

lithium-ion as a technology for use in the power sector, as the technology itself had 

been validated in other major industries, such as consumer electronics and 

transportation. It also had the benefit of a well-established global supply chain, which 

gave us confidence that we would be able to scale up supply as demand for storage 

solutions grew. 

At the time, no one had designed a large-scale energy storage system using lithium-ion 

batteries. Prior experiments in deploying batteries on the power grid proved the high 

value of the speed and responsiveness of batteries to improve grid reliability. However, 

the battery technology of the time proved unable to meet the challenge, due to its 

limited life and high costs. The conventional wisdom of the time was that batteries could 

not meet the challenges of utility-scale performance. As lithium-ion technology 

emerged, our team believed we had found useful business cases for battery-based 

energy storage systems. We moved forward with designing and building the first 

megawatt scale lithium-ion battery energy storage project. 

By 2008, our battery-based energy storage system was ready to be tested on the grid. 

The team connected the first grid-scale battery by integrating two large tractor trailers of 

batteries to the grid in Indiana. This proved that large-scale battery-based energy 

storage could safely connect to an electric grid, operate as a complete system, and 

respond remotely to instructions sent by the grid operator, a key reliability service for all 

power grids. 

Over the next few years, we worked closely with customers and stakeholders to prove 

grid-scale energy storage's feasibility, making history step-by-step: delivering the first 

commercial lithium-ion battery storage systems in the world in Northern Chile, and 

expanding our deployments in the United States in Pennsylvania, Texas, California, 

New York, West Virginia, and Ohio. And with every project - we were driving down 

costs for customers, learning, and innovating. 

In 2014 in California, we demonstrated that batteries could compete successfully 

against peaking power plants, securing the world's first Power Purchase Agreements 

(PPA) for energy storage to serve a utility's customers for twenty years, and still the 

largest contracted energy storage project in the world. To meet the needs for these 
50 

4 

larger, long-term projects, we turned our eye towards innovating and enhancing the 

energy storage technologies available at the time, incorporating lessons learned and 

applications developed into a single battery-based energy storage platform -

Advancion@ 

Rendering of 100 MW/400 MWh (Energy Storage) Alamitos Energy Center Under 

Contract and Expected to be Completed in 2021 in Long Beach, California 

We then offered the Advancion® platform to other utilities and developers, and in less 

than six months from contract signing, delivered the world's largest system of its kind in 

San Diego, California. 

Today, Advancion® is one of the world's leading energy storage platforms. With 20 

projects and 398 MW deployed and awarded across seven countries, we've helped 

ensure more customers in more locations benefit from energy storage. AES has 

deployed the most comprehensive and proven fleet of battery-based energy storage 

systems in the world, which have delivered more than 3.5 million megawatt-hours of 

service to-date. 
51 

5 

20 MW Harding Street Advancion® Energy Storage Array in Indianapolis, Indiana 

Energy storage is critical for the grid's transformation to a new energy network - one 

that can meet the needs of our rapidly changing energy landscape and accelerate a 

cleaner energy future. Global demand for grid-connected energy storage is rapidly 

expanding. To answer that demand and transform the grid, we need to continue to drive 

down costs by scaling energy storage up, further and faster. 

Just last week Siemens and AES announced we will join forces to create Fluence, a 

new global energy storage technology and services company that unites the scale, 

experience, and reach of its two parent companies. Subject to customary regulatory 

approvals, the 50/50 joint venture between Siemens and AES will deliver both the AES 

Advancion® and Siemens Siestorage energy storage platforms and continue to develop 

new storage solutions and services reaching customers in more than 160 countries. 

Fluence will fill a major gap in the market by bringing together two of the industry's 

leading power and storage companies to create a new company that will have the 

power, breadth, people and footprint to continue transforming the energy landscape. 
52 

6 

Combined, the companies deployed or have been awarded 48 projects in 13 countries 

with a total capacity of 463 MW. 

The energy storage market is at a point similar to what we saw with the solar industry in 

2007 or 2008. Solar was at the cusp of a tremendous period of growth and the energy 

storage industry will follow a similar trajectory, with significant expected growth over the 

next 10 years. Several forecasts anticipate the global market size of grid-connected 

storage at more than 28 GW by 2022, and could possibly go higher if places like India 

achieve their renewable energy targets. 

With the market at an inflection point, what did we, as a private company, learn about 

commercializing next generation technologies in the power sector? 

First, the existing power market is not designed to reward innovators and many of the 

needs reside within the network without any capability for remuneration. Many of the 

rules in the current power markets were put in place for traditional generation and do no 

fully account for technical, performance characteristics of advanced technologies like 

energy storage. The entire infrastructure of the existing centralized power and ancillary 

service markets were designed for the operating characteristics of traditional generation 

only. One notable example of the inability of the current market to accommodate a 

more efficient and valuable lithium-ion battery is the IPL Advancion® Energy Storage 

Array. Due to various issues, including an inability by the regional grid operator 

(Midwest Independent System Operator, MISO) to fully utilize the storage system and 

limitations in dispatch modeling, the device is continuously providing valuable service to 

the grid, but is not compensated for doing so. 

It is important to remedy these regulatory concerns as soon as possible, so that storage 

can provide key grid services to regional markets. The Federal Government has an 

important role to play here, to ensure markets are fully competitive and have the policy 

in place to catch up with the technology - otherwise, market rules set up several years 

ago become an unintended roadblock for commercializing energy storage. The Federal 

Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) currently has a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking 

(NOPR) related to removing barriers for storage participation in wholesale power 

markets. These types of efforts that include reforming market regulations to enable 

storage to compete in markets should be accelerated. 

The AE S Corporation 4300 Wilson Boulevard 

Arlington, VA 22203 

aes.coni 
53 

7 

By making the challenges and needs of the power system consistently more visible, 

technologies and the capital to fund them can be mobilized to address these needs. 

For example, the earliest instances of energy storage were based around resolving 

frequency management in large power systems such as the Mid-Atlantic PJM Regional 

Transmission Organization Power Market. This was made possible due to the fact that 

this market had made the need for frequency management a known need through a 

defined market service. In other parts of our electric sector, where we do not have 

organized markets, this need remains obscured. Whereas energy storage has emerged 

to lower the cost, improve reliability, and reduce emissions associated with frequency 

regulation in the organized markets, these technologies have not yet been applied in 

more closed power systems. 

Second, on the topic of battery chemistry research we believe that lithium ion is mature 

and private capital from large battery manufacturing companies are moving it forward at 

incredible speed and investment. . The Government should continue funding R&D on 

other early stage battery chemistries that have the potential to achieve greater 

capabilities. 

Third, the national labs through the Department of Energy (DOE) are doing a great job 

in advancing the modeling and visualization of benefits that energy storage brings to the 

grid. These are complex analytic simulations that require the use of state of the art 

power market models and a high degree of computational rigor; the Government should 

encourage and increase investments in the DOE and national labs, to continue this 

work and to share analytical methods with utilities, wholesale market operators, and 

other stakeholders responsible for planning, operating and maintaining the electric 

system. This is a critical piece of commercialization because it provides the analytic 

support for comparing the costs and benefits of deploying energy storage for specific 

applications. 

Finally, the Government should continue to provide technical assistance to storage 

project deployments, particularly for states and utilities that are considering their first 

projects but may be constrained by lack of technical experience. Through our 

experience, we have found that deploying projects in the field is the best way to 

enhance learning among all stakeholders - utilities, grid operators and state regulators 

alike. 
54 

8 

Mr. Chairman, thank you again for the opportunity to testify today- I would like to invite 

you and the other Members of the Committee to visit any of our storage facilities in the 

United States. I am happy to lake any questions. 

Thank you. 
55 

Kiran Kumaraswamy, 

Market Development Director 

AES Energy Storage 

Mr. Kiran Kumaraswamy is a Market Development Director at AES 

Energy Storage. In this role, he is directly responsible for 

identifying markets and applications that are attractive for energy 

storage development and educating potential customers on the 

benefits of energy storage. His work involves implementing 

regulatory and policy solutions that create access to key 

markets. Kiran also works with all the electricity industry 

stakeholders, trade associations and regulators. Prior to joining 

AES, he worked as a Senior Manager in ICF International advising 

private sector clients on wholesale power market and transmission 

issues. He holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from University of 

Wisconsin, Madison and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the 

University of Madras, India. 
56 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Kumaraswamy. 

Let me address my first question to Dr. DeWitte and Mr. 

Kumaraswamy, and it is this: What regulatory hurdles did you face 

and what do you suggest Congress do to address those regulatory 

hurdles? And Dr. DeWitte, we’ll start with you. 

Dr. DEWITTE. Thank you for the question. We’re actively in that 

process right now, and we have a long road ahead of us, frankly. 

The nuclear regulatory process is—it’s an ongoing and sort of everlasting process once you are commercializing a technology and putting it to field and into market. There’s been a lot of concerns historically about the readiness for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to handle advanced reactors. We found that that’s generally 

been overstated and that they’ve been well prepared. In particular, 

recent activities around working with DOE to prepare for what are 

called advanced reactor design criteria as well as other efforts the 

NRC has undertaken to prepare themselves technically to review 

advanced reactor applications are paying dividends as we speak. 

Our formal interactions with the regulator have gone quite well 

so far. However, there’s still room to improve, and I think a couple 

of those areas focus on rightsizing regulations for reactor size and 

potential risk and also rightsizing security and staffing requirements. That still needs to be done. So there’s still opportunities for 

improvement but generally we’ve been pleased. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Good. Thank you, Dr. DeWitte. 

Mr. Kumaraswamy? 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. Thank you, Chairman. Like I mentioned in 

my opening remarks, I think one of the key things in the power 

sector is that you have market rules that are put in place for technologies that were prevalent at that time in the marketplace, and 

these are commonly tailored towards traditional generation facilities, and one of the concerns that we have is that when you have 

advanced technologies like energy storage that are trying to get 

into these regional power markets, those rules don’t apply directly 

to them so they have to be changed in order for you to allow for 

the capabilities and performance characteristics of these devices. 

So just to give you an example, Indianapolis Power and Light, 

which is an AES Company, which is in the State of Indiana, we 

have had difficulty integrating a new 20-megawatt battery energy 

storage project in that regional market mainly because of the fact 

that the power market rules in the Midwest, independent system 

operator are not set up to handle the characteristics of energy storage, and so Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is doing a 

great job. They have that Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to remedy a lot of these issues, and I think encouraging those efforts to 

completion as quickly as possible once FERC actually gets the 

quorum would be a pretty important step for us to make sure that 

the technology can be brought into the market and the market can 

realize all of those benefits that the technology provides. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Good. Thanks. 

Dr. Sant and Dr. DeWitte and Mr. Kumaraswamy, do your technologies reduce carbon emissions? And if so, can you quantify it? 

But first of all, do they reduce carbon emissions, and is that significant? Dr. DeWitte—Dr. Sant, let’s start with you. 
57 

Mr. SANT. Thank you, Chairman Smith. Yes, they do. I should 

point out the way our work is really set up, what we’re trying to 

do is reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that are associated with 

cement production. So we’re trying to create replacements for Portland cement, which like I pointed out, provides about, give or take, 

nine percent of global CO2 emissions. Being able to reduce the CO2

footprint associated with cement production by avoidance and by 

taking up CO2 by utilization, both yield reductions in carbon dioxide. However, we should be careful to point out that this is a small 

number, so we’re talking about a few percentage points. It’s a big 

number if you look at it in terms of the potential reduction that 

you can achieve, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s still only 

a few percent. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Sant. 

And Mr. Kumaraswamy? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Sure. Energy storage definitely has the capability to reduce the amount of emissions that we have. It’s also 

notable that the U.S. electric grid currently has less than one percent of energy storage in the system. That’s equal to about 20 minutes of the total demand that we have for energy in the country. 

This is in comparison to about 4 days’ worth of storage that we 

typically find in other networks like gas networks and significantly 

more storage than we have in things like data networks. So just 

a point that the amount of energy storage that we have in the system is significantly lower in the energy system. 

By increasing the amount of energy storage that we have in the 

grid, we can make sure that we integrate all of the renewable energy sources that we have on the system, and most importantly, 

help operate the existing conventional generation resources much 

more efficiently. Instead of cycling them back and forth, you actually get the capability to operate these existing generation facilities 

at more stable output blocks, which means that they actually 

produce less emissions, and you reduce the amount of renewable 

curtailment also and so there’s significant environmental benefits 

with energy storage. 

Chairman SMITH. Thanks, and Dr. DeWitte, briefly, nuclear is 

obviously going to have a huge impact on carbon emissions. Can 

you explain why and how? 

Dr. DEWITTE. Yes. It has a huge impact on reducing CO2 and 

other emissions because it doesn’t produce any during generation 

and it has a massive scalable potential. One single fission event 

produces 50 million times as much energy as when you combust a 

single molecule of natural gas, so you can avoid a lot of emissions. 

Look at France and Sweden. They have some of the best track 

records for decarbonization solely due to nuclear, frankly. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate your answers 

today. 

And Ms. Johnson is recognized for her questions. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Venky, we have heard from scientists and policymakers alike 

that there’s often a false boundary drawn between basic and applied science. To some, supporting basic research is an important 

role that government—of government while applied research 

should be left to the private sector. Yet this idea that there is a 
58 

line that neatly divides the two separate levels of research is not 

realistic and certainly goes against general understanding of scientific discovery and innovation. 

As you mentioned in your testimony, you have written extensively about this issue. Would you agree with this characterization 

or do you really feel there is a distinctive line? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. So thank you very much, Honorable Minority Leader. I want to really emphasize that historically, this divide 

started during World War II, but really, many scholars, not just 

me, including economists, social scientists have done studies and 

have shown that this is a false dichotomy and in fact you have to 

actually fund all aspects of research to be effective. 

My own work, which really was modeled after Bell Labs—in fact, 

I looked at the original speeches of Bell Labs. They were such 

iconic institutions which did such great science and such great 

technology. They made an explicit point of not breaking research 

up into parts. In fact, the leader of Bell Labs had arguments with 

Vannevar Bush on that subject because he said we do not separate 

them because in fact discoveries and inventions feed on each other 

and there’s both back and forth. 

So my argument is, research does need some insulation but not 

from engineering and technology. It is about the long term. It is 

about the somewhat unpredictable, unscheduled. Nobody predicted 

the shale gas revolution would happen by that research, as an example. Same with nuclear fission, same with solar cells. So the 

point is, the longer-term work, the federal government has an extreme role and it must involve science, technology and engineering 

intimately linked and not separated, and that’s—the Department of 

Energy, the way this has been separated, has been a severe hindrance in my view in terms of stovepiping. As I mentioned, even 

NSF realized in the 1980s through a corporate lab director named 

Eric Block to create these interdisciplinary centers including engineering research centers so the question to ask is, how are the Energy Innovation Hubs like the Science and Technology Centers and 

Engineering Research Centers, which is missing in the Office of 

Science. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. Any other witnesses like to comment 

on that? 

Dr. DEWITTE. I would, please. Thank you. 

I think it’s one of the interesting things about the commercialization that we’re working on towards—with metal fuels specifically 

and advanced reactors is it opens up the pathway to continuous innovation for improvements that we’ve discovered along the development pathway already. It’s important to never lose sight of that 

and not to think that something is just ready because it’s still at 

some of those stages that you discover new things to do. Those are 

still too early for commercial readiness, and it’s important to have 

an awareness on that, and also to maintain that perspective that 

once you get something ready to go for commercialization, that 

doesn’t mean innovation is done. There’s still opportunities and 

pathways to bridge on that. 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. May I add? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Sure. 
59 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. So you can argue how far in the innovation 

chain one should fund, and we can discuss that. This is back to the 

late stage, and that’s a legitimate argument. I would say it depends 

on the situation. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Dr. Venky, the President’s budget request declared 

some research as early stage and therefore worthy of federal support and other activities as later-stage research that should be immediately eliminated given that the private sector is supposedly 

better equipped to carry this research out. However, the Administration officials recently confirmed to Committee staff that they did 

not engage with the private sector at all while compiling the budget request to determine what industry would be able to or willing 

to pick this up. In your experience, are the cuts proposed for the 

fiscal year 2018 budget research areas that the private sector is 

willing to simply start funding after the federal government cuts 

them off? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. This is an extremely important question. I 

actually—I personally feel, I think there is not good data on that 

anyway, but the private sector today in the United States is just 

not doing the longer-term work because of the risk involved, and 

that’s one of the reasons in fact because of global competition, other 

countries are beginning to do more of that because of state support. 

So the point is, our companies are not doing it, not in every industry. IT is still—I think Google and Microsoft are doing some, which 

his very good, but the energy case, it’s definitely not true. 

There is evidence, on the other hand, if government makes the 

investments, eventually it reaches the private sector as it did for 

the shale gas and several other cases, but what is really quite important, I think, is there does need to be like our Engineering Centers, our Energy Innovation Hubs, ARPA–E, must involve consultations with the private sector. We do want to have them involved 

in that discussion so that we can actually think about that. When 

we made our energy plans in the book which I co-authored with 

two of my colleagues, we actually interviewed a lot of private sector 

people where they thought the investment should be made. So I 

think because they want the long-term investments, so I think we 

want to involve them in the discussion as well. It has to be a cooperative thing. As I said, technology transfer is a body contact support. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. My time has expired. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, is recognized. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and 

thank you, Mr. Chairman, for taking the leadership and calling 

this hearing today. We need to have discussions like this on basics, 

and your leadership is certainly making sure that we get that type 

of discussion. 

Let me note that to our witness who was mentioning about the— 

Mr. Sant, who was mentioning about the turning of CO2 into useful 

material, and we compare that to what I consider to be sort of an 

irrational approach to try dealing with CO2 and just trying to 

eliminate CO2. You’re suggesting that we actually can use CO2 in 

a way that will be beneficial to humankind and making a profit out 

of extracting it. And let me note that you’re talking about cement. 
60 

There is a company in my area, Newlight, that has developed a 

methodology of—and they have a process now working that takes 

CO2 out of the air and turns it into plastic, high-quality plastic, 

and I think that we are going to find with research that instead 

of going about the regulatory and trying to stamp out the use of 

CO2, we’re going to find it’s much more effective for mankind to 

find useful purposes for CO2 that we can actually extract it from 

the air and we don’t have to worry about the debate as to whether 

CO2 is a pollutant or not if you actually have people using it for 

positive ends. So number one, I thank you for your testimony 

today. I didn’t know about your uses that you’re suggesting that 

are available, and I think it deserves a lot of attention. So thank 

you. 

What also deserves attention as far as I’m concerned is the future of nuclear energy in this country, and throughout the world. 

Nuclear energy had such great—we had such great hopes for it but 

it should be evident to anyone now that the former light water reactors, the initial move on stage in the nuclear area, is extraordinarily dangerous. We have closed down San Onofre in my area, 

and rightfully so, because there are dangers involved with light 

water reactors. 

Mr. DeWitte, does your, what you’re trying to develop now in the 

nuclear energy field, does that have the same dangers? 

Dr. DEWITTE. No, very different safety profile. It operates truly 

on natural forces. It’s very passive. It has a pressure—basically no 

pressure operations and so it makes it a very safe profile in terms 

of what it can do and behave. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Can it melt down and release radioactivity? 

Dr. DEWITTE. Effectively, no. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So we have the capability now, Mr. Chairman, to actually do this. We’ve had this capability for a while, and 

we have instead been for whatever forces at play in our society, we 

have been channeling resources into developing nuclear power 

plants that have extreme danger associated with them, and now we 

should understand, and the testimony today highlights this, that 

we should focus on our alternatives, making sure the alternative 

that we have, which is a nuclear energy source for electricity, that 

is far less dangerous, if not dangerous at all. We should make sure 

that that comes to play. That’s right through this Committee. This 

Committee will do the things that are necessary to make sure that 

the next generation of nuclear power, which is safer, that we get 

into that new generation as soon as possible. And when we’re talking about that, as soon as possible. 

Dr. DeWitte, do you see the fact that the small-scale programs 

and perhaps like your own which provide—were provided technical 

support and lab capabilities, do you think, is that a better way for 

us to approach this than through large grants through the license 

to try to move things through the regulatory process? 

Dr. DEWITTE. I think in general it has substantial benefits for 

where the industry is now, and I think it is a better way because 

I think what we’ve seen is, we’ve had very high impacts and highleverage outcomes from a very small amount of money to date, 

much more efficiently than you would get with a large cost-share 

program at this stage. That doesn’t mean that you can have those 
61 

down the road for demonstration-type purposes but I think it’s a 

better use at this stage. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And one last thing, Mr. Chairman. I think 

that the—it doesn’t really make sense for us to be funding big companies to help them move through the licensing process, which is 

basically a federal process, so we’re giving grants to people to help 

them deal with the federal agencies and instead we should try to 

reform the federal agencies so that they don’t have these impediments to this type of progress. 

Thank you very much again for your leadership, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher, and the gentlewoman from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici, is recognized. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank 

you to the panel for your excellent testimony. 

Dr. DeWitte, I want to thank you particularly for mentioning in 

your testimony NuScale Power, which is of course headquartered 

in northwest Oregon in the district I’m honored to represent, and 

also thank you for mentioning the role of the national labs and the 

Department of Energy in your work over the years. I really appreciate that. 

Mr. Kumaraswamy, thank you for talking about energy storage, 

and your work on energy storage and the potential for modernizing 

the grid is something that I’ve had many conversations about back 

home in Oregon. In your testimony, you say that the national labs 

through the Department of Energy are doing a great job in advancing the modeling and visualization of benefits that energy storage 

brings to the grid, and you go on to say that the government should 

encourage and increase investments in the Department of Energy 

and national labs to continue this work. Yet we are now looking at 

the Trump Administration’s proposal, which has significant cuts to 

the Department of Energy. They seem to be ignoring recommendations from industry experts like you. For example, the fiscal year 

2018 budget proposes to eliminate the Advanced Modeling Grid Research subprogram that’s within the Department of—excuse me— 

within the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. I 

know that Administration officials recently confirmed that they did 

not engage with the private sector at all when determining which 

Department of Energy R&D programs they would be cutting or 

eliminating. 

So could you comment on what the consequences would be of cutting research and development programs like that one that provide 

us with the capabilities that you mentioned are so important in upgrading the grid? 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. Sure. I think one of the hallmarks of commercializing new technologies like energy storage and bringing 

them to market is making sure that the needs of the system and 

the benefits of the technology can be understood and appreciated 

by all of the stakeholders, and so just maybe I can offer an example 

of one of the early instances when we actually deployed energy 

storage in the marketplace. This happened to be in the mid-Atlantic region of the country in a market called the PJM regional transmission market, and this was largely made possible because of the 

fact that the market made the need completely known to everybody 

that was involved in that place, and so you know, it was need that 
62 

was oriented around frequency management and the role that energy storage could play towards addressing the frequency management issue and provide all of the service and for all of the stakeholders to evaluate those benefits. The tools were available for 

that. And so I think that’s the key part towards commercializing 

new technologies, and other parts of our electric sector where we 

don’t have organized electric markets like in the PJM market or 

portions of the Northeast, I think the need still remains pretty obscure. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you, and I do want to get to another question. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Venky, the Trump Administration released its budget proposal for fiscal year 2018, and the research and development funding levels, as I mentioned for the Department of Energy, are woefully inadequate, and the President said he wants to usher in an 

era of American energy dominance yet he’s simultaneously proposing to cut and, frankly, devastate our energy research enterprise, so that’s not the path to a stronger America. It’s a path to 

energy reliance on international, sometimes unstable competitors. 

So does the fiscal year budget proposal set us on a path toward 

energy dominance, and will the private sector be willing and able 

to fund the research that will no longer be funded if these budget 

cuts go into effect? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Thank you very much for that question because I think you’re right on. In fact, many of the things mentioned 

including nuclear power at Idaho Nuclear Laboratory or National 

Nuclear Energy Laboratory, which does a lot of test facilities for 

many of our things, they come from the so-called applied offices, 

and these are extremely important test facilities which are vital for 

the national interest. 

Second, in fact, this early-stage technology research is not being 

done by the private industry. As I said, we do want to involve 

them. There needs to be cooperative research and development 

agreements but, in fact, we will become second class from what I 

see in my role both as Foreign Secretary of the National Academies 

and continuing looking at what is happening in China and other 

places. That technology is moving forward, and we need to be at 

the leading edge. 

Ms. BONAMICI. I agree that—— 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. I cannot—— 

Ms. BONAMICI. Dr. Venky, the energy efficiency and renewable 

energy would receive a 70 percent cut, and some of the activities 

will get an 80 percent cut. Oregonians are leading the way with 

some of these technologies. What would be the consequences of 

drastically reducing that research and development for U.S. competitiveness in a global economy? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. We will not be protecting our future. As an 

American, I came here during the height of the space race and the 

role of technology, how important it was. I’m passionate about technology. It is politically agnostic. It really will shape our future. 

Even electric cars, that horse has run out of the barn. It’s only two 

percent today but longer term people learn to make it cheaper, it’ll 

be much more efficient because the engine is much easier to maintain from simple engineering, the same reason shale revolution 
63 

happened because natural gas is cleaner and cheaper than coal. So 

it behooves us—people talked about nuclear. Nuclear is extremely 

important, and I think for this Committee, it’s important to know 

that no matter what happens, the electricity grid is going to need 

base power, at least 20 percent base power, so we will have to have 

it come either some kind of natural gas or nuclear or some other— 

maybe even coal, clean coal where you capture it. So we want to 

protect that. It has to be diversified and heterogeneous and we 

should be advancing the nuclear technology so it becomes safer, 

more cost-effective, et cetera, and doing that kind of research, I 

personally think it’s still valuable. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you, Dr. Venky. 

I see my time is expired. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Bonamici. 

And the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Weber, is recognized. 

Mr. WEBER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

My goodness. So many questions here. 

Dr. Venky, I’m going to come right back to you. You said 20 percent base power backup, whether it’s clean coal, whether it’s nuclear, whether it’s natural gas. How did you get to 20 percent? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. I think people have done great work and 

figured out statistically what will happen so you know that you 

need some base power. People have—people who know how to manage grids will tell you that you’ve got to maintain stability have a 

certain backup of steady power. 

Mr. WEBER. That seems low to me because that’s one-fifth of the 

power required. 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Somebody may say it might be a little 

higher. Certainly it’s going to be required. 

Mr. WEBER. Would you agree that it’s better to have more power 

than less power? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. It’s always good to have. I believe in safety. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. And you believe in clean coal technology? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. If clean coal can be done. So one of the options—technology must provide options, and so when you have one 

of the areas that long-term federal funding might be valuable is in 

fact for carbon capture and storage if you can actually make use 

of the carbon, which is even better. So I actually want to keep 

those options open including for large investments for certain cases 

because options is what the technology is about. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. Well, certainly they are, and I would say the 

higher percentage is the best option there. 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. And then there are many global countries 

which are dependent on those. They might have to have some global implications, which might help the overall—— 

Mr. WEBER. Was it Theodore Roosevelt who said ‘‘Speak softly 

and use nuclear as backup’’? I’m just—— 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Sorry. I get excited. 

Mr. WEBER. Just asking. 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Yes. 

Mr. WEBER. Dr. DeWitte, this question is for you. You were a 

strong supporter of our nuclear energy legislation, which passed 

the House three times last Congress—you alluded to that—and 

again earlier this year as part of the DOE Research Innovation Act. 
64 

What could the policy—obviously you’re tracking that bill and paying attention. What could the policy in that bill including the construction of that versatile neutron source provide to you and other 

advanced reactor companies? Would you elaborate on that for us? 

Dr. DEWITTE. Absolutely. Thank you for the question. That legislation’s incredibly important because it enables—one, it opens up 

the opportunities and streamlines the processes to work with the 

national labs and take advantage of their infrastructure and capabilities, and it also, of course, paves the way to provide new capabilities with a versatile neutron source or a fast test reactor, which 

will accelerate both the development of new fuels and materials so 

that we can get to market more quickly with these technologies 

and discover entirely new things that we don’t even know about 

today because we don’t have those capabilities that a facility like 

that would provide. 

Mr. WEBER. All while working with the regulatory agency that 

would be involved in the process—— 

Dr. DEWITTE. Absolutely. 

Mr. WEBER. —which would help expedite that process. 

Dr. DEWITTE. And that’s critical too because they need to learn 

from it, and we can all learn together, frankly. 

Mr. WEBER. You bet ya. Now, you also mentioned that France 

and Sweden have done a really good job of reducing their carbon. 

Do you know percentages and time frames? 

Dr. DEWITTE. Generally speaking, France decarbonized pretty 

substantially in about 15 to 20 years. They effectively went to 80 

percent nuclear-based power sources, which reduce their carbon 

emissions by a commensurate amount. Sweden was a similar time 

frame and a lesser but a similar impact. It wasn’t quite the 80 percent that—— 

Mr. WEBER. Is France still at 80 percent today? 

Dr. DEWITTE. They’re a little less just because they haven’t been 

building as many nuclear plants, and unfortunately, they’re moving 

to shut some down, which is a terrible mistake. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. And do you know the grid size per chance of 

each of those countries? 

Dr. DEWITTE. I do not but I know that they are smaller of course 

than the United States as it is, but off the top of my head, I think 

the French grid is somewhere slightly smaller than Texas. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. You were vocal about how—is it Oklo? Is that 

how you say that? 

Dr. DEWITTE. Yes, sir. 

Mr. WEBER. Oklo is funded through private investment but this 

is not the norm for innovative nuclear companies. Why did you 

choose that model? 

Dr. DEWITTE. Because that gave us a pathway to get to market 

quickly. It also gave us a control over our own destiny so we 

weren’t at the whims of either a project manager at some agency 

or at the political whims depending on what was going on of the 

government. It gave us insulation from that. It also gave us the 

ability to focus on what the market wants and not have to cater 

to what perhaps a grant maker wants. 

Mr. WEBER. Refresh my memory. How long has the company 

been in existence? 
65 

Dr. DEWITTE. We started—we launched in 2013, and so it’s only 

been about a little over four years. 

Mr. WEBER. And where are you located? 

Dr. DEWITTE. We’re in Sunnyvale, California. 

Mr. WEBER. Sunnyvale, California. Okay. 

Mr. Chairman, I’m going to yield back. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Weber. 

And the gentleman from California, Mr. McNerney, is recognized 

for his questions. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Well, I thank the Chairman. It’s a good hearing, 

and I’m enjoying listening to your testimony. I think it’s pretty bipartisan, and I look forward to continuing this discussion. 

Dr. Venky, would you describe the valley of death for technology 

and how the government can play a role in that? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. So as, you know—— 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Your microphone. 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Sorry. And I’ll try to speak more softly. I 

tend to get excited. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. I can understand that. 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. I would like to say that it’s good to have 

passion, though, to care about it, and I care deeply about us being 

number one, and my Bell Labs past taught me that. We always 

have the leading edge. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Valley of death question. 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Yes. So very early stages, if we take the 

transistor, the original transistor was a total clooch. Nobody ever 

thought you could actually make circuits out of it. So the first 

phase is to sort of make it something which you can actually make 

at least a few of. That’s the first valley of death, to actually where 

is this just a good research curiosity and not really any technology. 

As you learn how to do this, there are of course various stages 

where you would decide to turn it off. The big valley of death comes 

a little bit before manufacture because then you have to literally 

make millions of them and actually invest a lot of money in that. 

So that—so it’s a question of the investment where you go up in 

scale, so those two valleys of death are particular important, and 

the first one, there’s no clear question that we have a role. That’s 

exactly what ARPA–E or Energy Innovation Hubs, et cetera, do or 

Engineering Research Centers. 

The second one is for the very large issues, and there, you could 

argue where is the appropriate government’s role. At the Harvard 

Kennedy School, when I first became Director of Science Technology Public Policy program in 2011, we convened a very large 

group including one of people from industry and a lot of people 

from government and academia to debate the government’s role. 

It’s actually there in that report, and there’s not uniform agreement, but everybody agreed for some particular ones, it might be 

the nuclear case, it might be the carbon capture or storage, but 

there’s a huge public-goods aspect where in fact you must have the 

options should in case something happen, and coal is an important 

commodity worldwide, that maybe there is a role. And then should 

there be some joint thing. Everybody agreed including the industrialists of some important points that things should be steady. We 

cannot let it be just simply political, i.e. it is a failure. 
66 

Second, the companies must have a significant skin in the game. 

They must have something like 50 percent skin in the game, large 

skin in the game, and you could find that was the view of this 

workshop which I held, and of course, some people you may say for 

some things we don’t have a role, the private companies should 

take it and just spend the money. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you. 

Mr. DeWitte, in your opinion, does the fiscal year 2018 budget 

proposal set us on the path toward energy dominance? 

Dr. DEWITTE. I don’t think it does. I think there’s more we can 

do, absolutely. But I do think there are some good signs in there, 

particularly the appropriations for fast test reactor. I’m supportive 

of that. But I think we need to not lose sight of the fact that if we 

really care about dominating in the global space, the rest of the 

world is investing heavily and massively. We cannot lose sight of 

that. And we have to pay attention to that. But we also have to 

be focused and mindful about what the markets are wanting and 

needing and not just in the United States, and that’s something 

that I think sometimes there can be a focus too myopically on. We 

need to look worldwide and how we can compete globally. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Could you discuss how federal investments in 

nuclear R&D have paved the way toward your company to succeed? 

Dr. DEWITTE. Oh, absolutely. That’s a cornerstone upon which 

we’re building and all advanced reactor developers are building. 

That’s an absolute, fundamental necessity that we are thankful 

was invested in. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you. 

Dr. Venky, again, the department of Energy has four Energy Innovation Hubs and they’re establishing a fifth one on the cross-cutting issue of the energy-water nexus, which was supported by the 

last Congress. Do you support the use of—continued use of this 

model, especially with regard to the energy-water nexus? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Yes. Unlike ARPA–E, which I’ve looked at 

in detail in my research, I know the Energy Innovation Hubs, I 

know the one at Argonne, which is run by George Crabtree in storage, I actually think it’s a very important model. These—the full 

impact will only be known about 10, 15 years down the road but 

we know from history from what NSF has done and what Department of Defense has done that these will be very valuable. So I— 

it will have to be a balanced portfolio and there do need to be certain critical areas where you actually combine strengths. Industry 

should be involved as well as the national laboratories and academia, and I actually think it’s a very good model, one of the different ways of doing it. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, my time went too fast. I’d like another five minutes. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. McNerney. 

The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Hultgren, is recognized. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all so 

much for being here. This is an important hearing, and grateful for 

your work, and it is so important for us, especially as the Committee continues to look at ways in which the DOE can better assist the private sector as they do what they do best: innovate and 
67 

bring new products to the market. Seeing firsthand how the national labs work at Fermilab in my district and Argonne just outside of my district, I’ve been able to see why the labs and our user 

facilities are often referred to as the crown jewel in our research 

ecosystem. I was glad to see stable funding for these facilities in 

the energy and water appropriations bill the Committee just reported, and I’ll continue to keep fighting to see this in the final bill 

as well. 

I wanted to address my first question to all of you if any of you 

have comments on it, and wondered if you could just let us know 

in what ways did you specifically use federal funded research infrastructure like user facilities at the DOE national labs to develop 

your technology, and what other facilities should DOE be looking 

at and how could we change the operating practices of the labs to 

make them even more accessible to small business and startup developing innovative technologies. 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. When I was at Bell Labs, we did much of 

our research work in supporting, for example, light source facilities 

at Brookhaven National Lab, at Argonne National Laboratory as 

an example because they are extremely important, and then when 

I was Vice President, I actually—of Sandia, we actually created 

photolithography where one can use some of these light sources at 

Lawrence Berkeley Lab, et cetera, to advance lithography techniques, but those are very—these large facilities including run by 

the Renewable Energy Laboratory, these are all extremely important including high-performance computing at Fermilab, at Argonne National Laboratory, and we still use them even in academia 

including the computing facilities. So test facilities are a crucial 

role and extremely important. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Thank you. Anybody else? 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. I could offer a comment. I think one of the 

key areas that’s being pretty helpful from the nation lab side has 

been looking at the benefits that storage brings to the grid. I think 

there’s significant research that’s being done by NREL, by PNNL 

and Oak Ridge Labs and many of the national labs towards establishing all of the values that energy storage bring to the grid, right, 

and so I think that’s a cornerstone for us to make sure that all of 

the stakeholders that are involved in some these key decision-making processes are able to appreciate those benefits. Like I mentioned in my testimony, I think it’s one where the private sector 

can significantly benefit from that type of research and computational models that are deployed at the national labs. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Dr. DeWitte? 

Dr. DEWITTE. I’d be happy to. We’ve benefited tremendously 

from the decades of research and development that Argonne led in 

advanced reactor development, and we’re actively working with 

them now and the capabilities they and Idaho as well as Sandia 

and others have, and the GAIN program has tremendously help— 

been tremendously helpful in streamlining access and partnering. 

Mr. HULTGREN. I’d like to follow up on that if that’s all right, Dr. 

DeWitte. As you said, Oklo participated in the Gateway for Acceleration and Innovation in Nuclear, or GAIN program, which provides the nuclear community with access to the technical expertise 

at the national labs in order to commercialize these new tech-
68 

nologies. I wonder, do you think these small-scale programs that 

provide access to technical support and lab capabilities are a better 

investment than providing large grants to move through the licensing process? 

Dr. DEWITTE. In general at this stage in the advanced reactor industry, I do think they are more effective. I think as the industry 

grows and matures, it might be valuable to revisit that, but the impact that you can get and the return effectively on investment that 

you can achieve with these small grants that are targeted across 

a broad spectrum of areas. They yield really high-impact results for 

very little money. What we’ve done with a few hundred thousand 

dollars is frankly been phenomenal in our mind as well as the 

mind of our investors, very high impact. 

Mr. HULTGREN. That’s great. Dr. DeWitte, sticking with you, 

does working with DOE improve or slow down the process necessary for startups like yours to create and implement innovative 

technologies? What policy changes can be made at DOE to make 

their engagement with the advanced reactor community more productive? 

Dr. DEWITTE. Yeah, I think the answer is, there’s benefits and 

drawbacks at this point, and we’re learning. Both parties are learning how to do this better and more efficiently. Contracting structures are being modernized and updated and general interaction 

mechanisms, and GAIN is very helpful in streamlining that process 

and identifying issues and helping address them, but the biggest 

single issue is DOE lacks the sense of urgency that the private sector demands. Unfortunately, in nuclear, we’ve gotten complacent in 

the industry like the pace of nuclear compared to the pace of our 

Silicon Valley peers is order of magnitude different. So we’re trying 

to accelerate that, and DOE needs to, I think, recalibrate that and 

continue to strive to be more urgent in what they do. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Is there anything we can do to help with that? 

Dr. DEWITTE. I think one of the issues is, it’s been helpful, I 

think, that you guys have done and will continue to do is through 

frankly Congressman Weaver’s bill to open up access to the national laboratories and be able to partner with them in different 

ways both as user facilities as well as possible demonstration facilities. That and the impetus that that provides I think is a huge opportunity to help address that issue and otherwise continually revisiting that challenge and seeing what can they do to be faster 

and more efficient interacting with the private sector. It’s just a 

constant learning process. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Great. My time’s expired. I’d love to follow up 

with you, but I need to yield back my time. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Hultgren. 

The gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Perlmutter, is recognized. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thanks, and Mr. Hultgren on that side and 

Dr. Foster on this side like to talk about their labs in Illinois. 

They’re like Illinois Chamber of Commerce, okay? So I want to talk 

about my lab and I want to start with you, Mr. Kumaraswamy, the 

National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado, and if you could talk 

about the way that that lab assists you and others in making sure 

this technology that is being developed really is valuable to the citizens of this country, so if you could start there, sir? 
69 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. Absolutely. I think they’re doing some fantastic work at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. We are 

grateful for that. One of the key areas of focus for us at AES is the 

application of using energy storage for peaking applications, so 

when we think about the country actually needing significant 

amounts of generation capacity that would run for a fraction of the 

time, right? That’s what we’re talking about when we talk about 

building new peaking gas plants. 

I think that energy storage is an extremely cost-effective alternative for building those peaking gas plants, and that’s an area 

that we have continued to benefit from the NREL type of studies, 

right, because one of the areas of research that goes on at NREL 

is to make sure that you actually look at the benefits of using storage for the peaking application and produce those type of highquality reports based on solid analytics and that helps us pursue 

these conversations regionally and nationally across many different 

stakeholders. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you. 

And you know, Dr. Venky, you were talking about clean coal and 

nuclear and, you know, natural gas, you know, a couple of the others, and I think we need to have a whole diverse approach to our 

energy production, and so I have a slide up there which shows 

NREL working on photovoltaics, you know, starting back when the 

lab started at 76 bucks down to about 30 cents, and there are some 

tax credits involved, and you know, part of what we’re trying to do 

as a country is to provide a cheaper and better and less polluting 

as possible. So talk a little bit about that continuum of research. 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Thank you very much for that question. 

Actually, NREL is a laboratory where another postdoc of mine 

spent significant time looking at their portfolio and analyzing and 

talking to people. 

First I want to mention that we are not given a consistent— 

somebody asked how can this help. That technology transfer is an 

important mission and that we are proud of it. So NREL actually 

developed the first technology which led to First Solar, and First 

Solar is among the few highly U.S. solar companies which are not 

in China or Germany. This is extremely important and we should 

be proud of it, and we should actually celebrate it because it came. 

The cost of solar of course has been coming down very significantly 

and producing a lot of jobs. You talk about the jobs, and these jobs 

will be there no matter what. The energy system is going to be heterogeneous. It is going to require things like solar as well as storage as well as natural gas, and all of it on day one it’ll evolve depending on circumstances, on geography, natural resources, et 

cetera. It’s a worldwide issue so us working in this—but however, 

the way that DOE also needs to make this as an important strategy and can make it simpler but there are certain things the NREL 

lab directors and the laboratory people should have greater discussion of working across that boundary under some proper guidelines 

that are open and fair in those matters so sometimes it can be 

more interfering the way the Department of Energy might run it. 

Developing a coherent policy there would be valuable. It would help 

NREL. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you. 
70 

And Dr. Sant, so high school, college, law school, I worked for a 

precast concrete company, and I was in the laboratory and we’d do 

the cylinders and then crush them and see how strong they were 

based on different things that we added. So talk to me a little bit 

about how strong this CO2NCRETE using a byproduct that could 

be a pollutant or could be a real substantial ingredient, tell me how 

strong this CO2NCRETE really is. 

Mr. SANT. Good question. So in fact, about 65, 70 percent of all 

concrete in the world that’s cast, so to speak, has a strength on the 

order of, let’s say, about 30 megapascals. That’s the kind you’d use 

to build a house. The stuff that we’re producing is well within that 

territory so there’s clearly a large accessible market you can reach 

out to. 

I will be careful to point out that we’re not trying to look for opportunity to build hundred-story buildings. We’re looking for opportunities to build everyday construction, which is really where the 

large volume of construction is, building as an example. It’s also 

important to point out exactly in that spectrum that there’s a 

unique opportunity here because as I’m sure you’re well aware, the 

construction industry is not really very tolerant of cost escalation. 

We like the lowest bid, and I think what one of the opportunities 

that comes about with what we’re doing is, we seem to have a real 

line of sight for being able to produce something that’s cost-competitive as is, which is an important part because that’s how you 

start to get penetration and diffusion. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you, and I yield back to the Chair. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Perlmutter. 

Mr. LOUDERMILK. [Presiding] Give me a moment to get prepared 

after the move here, and now I’ll recognize myself for five minutes 

for questions. That was convenient, wasn’t it? 

Dr. DeWitte, I’d like to kind of follow up on something that you 

mentioned when you were having the discussion with Mr. Webster—or Weber. I’m sorry. You talked about stability, and it was 

the stability and where the government may be, what the reaction 

of the government is, and the lack of stability going forward when 

it comes to research and development, and I think that really hits 

upon a problem that we’re facing today because politics is 90 percent emotion, and if we’re good, ten percent logic sometimes, and 

I see you laughing because we’re seeing that play out right now on 

the other side of Capitol. 

But historically, we’ve had agencies and other elements of government that had been that buffer between the whims of politicians and the science of research and development. They were that 

element that was there that focused on handling the politics on our 

side but buffering that from the research and development element 

of our society. The problem I see now from my perspective is that 

the political drive has filtered into those agencies. There seems to 

be a political element now within those agencies which we didn’t 

have as much in the past, and some of that comes from talking 

with some of our research institutions in Georgia. 

I recently visited one of our research institutes—well, I visited in 

the last couple years several of them, and I asked the question, 

where do we need to go, what do we need to be doing, and there’s 

two things especially when it comes to grants, that we’re contin-
71 

ually hearing the same concerns from our research institutions is 

twofold. One is the cost to manage the grant is going up, is extremely high, some up to 20 percent and even more spent on—of 

the grant money spent just on administration of the grant and reporting, and there’s—I’m seeing that that is pretty consistent. And 

the other is that there’s too much emphasis on short-time successes. In other words, there’s no room for failure anymore but failure is part of the scientific process. I mean, if it wasn’t—if Thomas 

Edison was receiving a modern-day grant, he wouldn’t have invented the light bulb because, as he said, he didn’t—his failures 

were 10,000 ways to prove something didn’t work. 

So Dr. DeWitte, and I’ll expand this out to others on the panel, 

do you see that? I know you’re dealing with private sector and it 

makes me think that maybe that’s some of the reason why you’re 

not going to the government for funding if you would opine on 

that? 

Dr. DEWITTE. Of course. Thank you for the question, and I think 

that’s a very real situation. We recently made some decisions at 

Oklo with our investors and our executive team not to pursue certain federal opportunities for funding because the costs of managing that were too high. They just simply weren’t worth it. And 

the other part of it is, often those can be targeted in a scope that’s, 

like you said, so risk-averse that it’s focusing merely on near-term 

objectives that really aren’t moving the ball forward or they’re not 

even looking at opportunities for finding impact in a market specifically, and as a result, you can kind of just miss the entire objective altogether, and I think that’s a very real challenge today. 

Mr. LOUDERMILK. Dr. Sant, I noticed you were nodding at part 

of that. Would you like to—— 

Mr. SANT. I think that is right. You know, very often I think a 

lot of goals end up being very narrowly focused, which means that 

you have to conform to a pretty narrow spectrum of ideas that even 

potentially look at, and also given the fact that there’s limitations 

in how much risk you can take, that turns out to be problematic, 

but I think the part which also turns out to the harder is grant 

timelines turn out to be rather short. I know that most of them are 

three years, if you’re really lucky, 5, and very often sustained work 

just needs much longer durations than that without an annual review deciding your fate, so to speak. 

Mr. LOUDERMILK. Yes, Doctor? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. A couple of comments on the same point. 

The Energy Innovation Hubs, et cetera, Energy Frontier Research 

Centers, are partially aimed at that longer-term issue, that is, fiveyear funded or four-year funded, same with the NSF, to encourage 

that, and some of that needs to happen. 

I think appropriate for this Committee is a lot of it’s energy. The 

Department of Energy has been studied a lot including the national 

labs, which are our crown jewels, and the Senate Committee has 

made recommendations including how the costs in the DOE might 

be minimized, et cetera, which would be quite important in tackling the kind of problem you’re asking about, in fact, the reporting 

requirements, et cetera, which would ease some of the burden and 

get more effect for the actual work being done. 
72 

Mr. LOUDERMILK. Well, thank you, and this is something that 

has been a passion of mine is reforming our grant system to reduce 

that cost so more of the money will actually go into the research 

and development and also allow for longer term because, you know, 

failure is part of scientific research. So thank you all for being 

here. 

At this time the Chair will recognize the gentlewoman from Hawaii, Ms. Hanabusa. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Venky, I am a great friend of DARPA. I’ve sat on the Armed 

Service Committees for years, and DARPA, in my opinion, has been 

one of the best hidden secrets that the Department of Defense has, 

especially in terms of its ability to innovate and its structure. Some 

have described it as 100 geniuses running all over the place with 

a travel agent kind of moderating, so it doesn’t have the usual bureaucratic structure that we think about. 

You have testified that you’ve spent a lot of time looking at the 

structure of ARPA–E, and as you know, in the Trump budget, his 

proposed budget, there’s only about $20 million and it’s really to 

transition the demise of ARPA–E. Can you first tell me from your 

perspective and what you know about how ARPA-e operates its importance and its significance as well as the kinds of research that 

you can point to that have been actually very critical for the Energy Department? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Thank you very much for asking that question. I feel quite passionately about ARPA–E because it’s a very important innovation in the Department of Energy. You know, we all 

value peer review. Peer review is important, but it has its limitation because it leads more to the average, and so ultimately you 

need program managers who are technically savvy, know the people and the work which is being done, and will consult obviously— 

you cannot just do it arbitrarily but try to actually pinpoint high 

risk and high reward where there are actually people who are evaluating the very high-risk part and then they would look at that, 

take an average, look at that distribution and by judgment make 

some high risk, and that’s what ARPA does too. So it’s an important innovation in the management system where you combine 

some good aspects of peer along with judgment, and especially with 

regard to high risk. 

The other thing which when we looked at many of the awards, 

we looked at—my postdoc looked at some 4,000 awards which were 

given by APRA–E. You should remember it’s still early. It’s only 

five years old. But what we found was that there was many scientific papers which were published in leading journals like Science 

and Nature and their impact was similar to that published in the 

Office of Science and yet there were a large number of patents. 

There were very few patents from the Office of Science. So that 

tells me ARPA–E is not being negligent in its science but is also 

developing new technology, i.e. the other is a missed opportunity. 

So I’m very positive of that aspect. 

And then in its early stage, there are some examples. The National Academies recently issued a report that actually I didn’t 

know that. A colleague of mine at Harvard, Joanna Eisenberg, 
73 

whom I hired a long time ago, she has developed some very narrow 

biomaterials which actually now are going to the Nature paper. Another colleague at Advanced Storage, battery flow, which is also 

scientific as well as leading to a company. So there are different 

forms here, and the early prognosis is good, and my guess is, it is 

a very important innovation along with Energy Innovation Hubs 

and Energy Frontier Research Centers to want to have portfolio. 

Ms. HANABUSA. So what do you think is going to take its place, 

if anything can take its place? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Oh, I hope it does not—I hope in the end— 

I believe including ARPA–E and much of this work was often a bipartisan. I really believe this should be bipartisan. It is for the 

country. And that doesn’t mean the program manager is always 

going to choose exactly the right one. That is not—even private 

people don’t do it. And these are risky but there should be some 

successes, and it should be bipartisan. I hope it really is funded. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Mr. DeWitte, when Dr. Venky was speaking, I 

saw you nodding. Do you have an opinion of ARPA–E? 

Dr. DEWITTE. It’s an interesting question. I do. I mean, we’ve 

supported different, I guess, workshops, if you will, and have been 

rather impressed by some of the activity that’s gone on. However, 

one of the things that I think—it’s an early-stage organization, and 

it’s still growing in a lot of cases and still has a lot of upside. That 

said, it has struggled, I think, and we’ve seen certain struggles of 

it being a little too academic in certain areas. That’s not always a 

bad thing, though. I just think it’s a matter of making sure you 

have an organization that continues to learn because some of these 

things should be able to afford to fail and learn and grow from 

that. That’s something that we really like to see happen. 

Ms. HANABUSA. Thank you. 

Mr. Chair, I yield back. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Hanabusa. 

And the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Higgins, is recognized 

for his questions. 

Mr. HIGGINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, thank you for appearing before this full Committee. 

Your combined IQ is frighteningly high and a welcome transition 

from some of the things we witness in Congress. 

Representing a state that is recognized as perhaps the Nation’s 

leader in the oil and gas industry, I witnessed regulatory overreach 

over the last decade to push the American oil and gas industry to 

the shores of other countries, and considering the totality of circumstance of the world’s ecology, my personal opinion is that it’s 

a psychologically unsound logic. 

So Mr. DeWitte, my question is for you, sir, regarding nuclear 

technology. Nuclear energy is one of the most heavily regulate industries in the United States, and we must balance the benefits of 

nuclear energy with potential safety risks and ecological concerns. 

These regulations can impede the potential for the export of U.S. 

nuclear technology but we must recognize that a high regulatory 

burden on exports in the United States could work against nuclear 

safety worldwide and security goals if it allows less regulated technologies form countries like Russia and China to reach new nuclear 
74 

markers. What types of regulations do you believe, sir, are unnecessarily holding back the export of U.S. nuclear technology? 

Dr. DEWITTE. Thank you very much for the question. I’m very 

passionate about this issue because it’s a huge hindrance to global 

leadership in nuclear and it’s something that we really actively as 

a country need to reevaluate because, like you said, our barriers 

we’re self-imposing are preventing us from being a massive world 

player that we should be here but also ceding the opportunities to 

frankly less mature and less safe and less beneficial competitors, 

and the reality is, we need to reevaluate that at the DOE level as 

well as the Department of Commerce, the NRC and the Department of State. 

In the last ten years or so, there’s been significant changes to the 

rules about export controls in nuclear that have been very detrimental. They’ve gone in the wrong direction. The expectations that 

were set in terms of exporting reactors to, for example, the UAE 

when we were negotiating those deals 8 or so years ago were misguided and have set the wrong expectations and the wrong standards that aren’t aligned with what frankly the U.S.’s goal and the 

global goals for nuclear deployment should be. We need to reevaluate those and we have to do it now because it’s affecting us today. 

Mr. HIGGINS. Thank you for that answer. I concur. Would you 

have specific recommendations perhaps you could provide this full 

Committee in writing over the course of the next month or so 

whereby we may consider your recommendations, sir—— 

Dr. DEWITTE. I would be—— 

Mr. HIGGINS. —as we attempt in a bipartisan manner to consider 

of course ecological concerns of our planet while at the same time 

recognizing the superiority of clean United States technology regarding energy development? 

Dr. DEWITTE. I would be happy to. American nuclear technology 

is the best so I’d be happy to do that. 

Mr. HIGGINS. One more brief question, if I may. The Department 

of Energy has recently made improvements to its Tech to Market 

and Technology Transitions programs. However, many companies 

still struggle with tech transfer contracting procedures that can 

take up to a year to complete. From your perspective, how could 

the federal government streamline public-private partnerships and 

ease access to taxpayer-supported research? 

Dr. DEWITTE. I’ll take a first go at that. I think one of the issues 

that we’ve seen is the fact that the contracting structures and the 

liability bases that the labs are effectively using to make their determinations are out of touch with what the objectives of the national labs really should be to the point that it’s—they’re afraid to 

do anything. We need to reevaluate that. It gets to a more fundamental question I think is, what are the contracting structures for 

the operators of the national labs? Bell Labs operated Sandia Labs 

in a beautiful way and in a way that centered around advancing 

the national interest and achieving and growing national excellence. I think we’ve lost that today. I think it’s time to reevaluate 

some of that so we can get back to what the core mission and the 

core capabilities of the labs are. I think that’s one of the starting 

points, and there’d be some others, but for the sake of time, I’d be 

happy to defer those to writing. 
75 

Mr. HIGGINS. Thank you. I would appreciate that. I believe your 

colleague has a comment. 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. I want to just second this aspect here. It 

is very important that the DOE is now actually having a technology transfer lab and a lot of it can be done at the laboratory 

level, people that understand the technology closely. That was our 

finding with NREL so I think reform and really recognizing strategically would add greatly and improve our technology transfer. 

Mr. HIGGINS. Thank you, sir. Gentlemen, thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Higgins. 

And the gentleman from New York, Mr. Tonko, is recognized. 

Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of our 

witnesses for participating in a very interesting hearing. 

The only way we are going to meet our energy challenges is 

through investments in research and development. We cannot lose 

sight of the vital role that government plays in innovation. The federal government must be an active partner with our universities 

and certainly with our private sector. 

Having an R&D portfolio that covers the spectrum from basic 

sciences to technology development, testing and deployment greatly 

augments the work being done by the private sector and in the university community, and sustained support of these efforts is essential to lowering costs and improving performance of our energy 

technologies. 

Dr. Sant, can you tell us a little bit about the role federal agencies have played in supporting your efforts? 

Mr. SANT. Of course. Happy to answer. So federal agencies, like 

I said, the Department of Transportation, the National Science 

Foundation and the Department of Energy have all funded our 

work. It’s all been funded at early stage. We’re in a university. 

However, the important thing to point out is that we’ve been able 

to access support from each of these agencies that is really, really 

very strategic. It’s come together to be able to address questions 

that are very narrow but we’re very interested in. For example, 

we’re interested in trying to understand how to really take building 

materials, which literally eat carbon dioxide. There’s two parts to 

this. So of course while we look at the basic to the applied continuum, while we’re working at the basic part, we need support 

going all the way into the applied end of the spectrum, and the reason that I say this is, while we do things in a laboratory and it’s 

easy often to realize successes, the challenge that you often run 

into is that as you start to scale up, there are things that don’t 

work, which require you to go back to the lab, and so you need this 

pathway where you can stage research and funding dollars to be 

able to go across the entire pathway, and that’s how you succeed 

in taking ideas and converting them into innovation and then 

translating them into technology. 

I think this is especially important to point out with conventional 

industries, for example, like the energy sector, the construction sector, which have very limited risk appetites, so to speak, and that’s 

why it’s very necessary for the government to underwrite a larger 

portion of the R&D pathway than would be typical, for example, 

let’s say, in the semiconductor space, and hence I think it’s ex-
76 

tremely strategic that agencies keep this in mind as funding decisions are made because it has implications on timeline and how 

you focus investment to go from ideas to wins that you can translate globally. 

Mr. TONKO. Thank you. And you talked about that carbon footprint in your comments slightly. The DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy—— 

Mr. SANT. Yes. 

Mr. TONKO. —has been working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through their fossil energy research, and you’ve been involved 

in that somewhat? 

Mr. SANT. Yes, so we are actually funded at this point through 

the National Energy Technology Laboratory. 

Mr. TONKO. Wonderful, and certainly I agree that across the field 

we need to develop technologies to reduce our carbon footprint, 

which is what I’m very proud of in terms of supporting a bill to 

make advanced gas turbines more efficient. The gas turbine R&D 

bill that I’m carrying with a fellow Republican with authorize 

DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy to carry out a multiyear, multiphase 

R&D program to improve the efficiency of gas turbines used in our 

power generation systems and to identify the technologies that ultimately will lead to gas turbine combined cycle efficiency of 67 percent, what might seem just like a trivial improvement but tremendously important in terms of electrons saved. 

If Members of Congress are going to claim to support an all-ofthe-above energy philosophy, then we need to support and fund an 

all-of-the-above research strategy to complement it. That means 

supporting robust funding for EERE and certainly for ARPA–E. 

Dr. Venky, we know that ARPA–E plays a critical role in expanding our portfolio of innovation programs and lowering the risk on 

projects that would not be supported by the private sector. Can you 

give some examples of how the products, processes, fuels or technologies that have been developed as a result of ARPA–E’s investments are changing our energy system and addressing the challenges we face? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. As I mentioned to another question from 

the Congresswoman from Hawaii, the National Academies recently 

issued a study. Of course, ARPA–E is still in the early stages, only 

four years old or something like that, but there are several examples we see highlighted. One was actually from Harvard with the 

slip-on technology, and I know of work that is done at Santa Barbara, Gallium Electronics, which has blossomed significantly, and 

as I mentioned in my previous response, they also have been doing 

some very good science. It’s really a missed opportunity if you don’t 

do them together. It’s really—there’s so many good examples. 

They’re the right track, and I will hasten to bet that ten years from 

now with the fullness of time, we’re going to have lots of examples 

because there’s both good science being done and patents being created. 

Mr. TONKO. Thank you. Thank you very much. 

I’m out of time, so Mr. Chair, I yield back. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Tonko. 

The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Babin, is recognized. 
77 

Mr. BABIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate all you witnesses being here today. 

Dr. Sant, I would like to ask you a couple of questions if you 

don’t mind. Can you explain the upcycling process in layman’s 

terms? 

Mr. SANT. Sure. 

Mr. BABIN. And how the process differs from traditional approaches to carbon utilization if you don’t mind? 

Mr. SANT. Sure. So in a brief sentence, we can define upcycling 

as beneficially utilizing a waste so it’s this idea of converting trash 

into treasure. We combust fossil fuels, we emit carbon dioxide from 

the stack. The work that we’re focused on is really trying to take 

that carbon dioxide and reutilize it. Now, the way we reutilize it 

is, we use this compound called calcium hydroxide, which you 

produce, for example, by either burning limestone and emitting 

CO2 and so hence it lets you keep the same mineralized CO2 within 

a loop so that’s how you reuse it. The other way you can actually 

produce calcium hydroxide is by using alkaline waste that you get 

from industries like slags and fly ash as an example and extracting 

calcium and magnesium ions out of those. So what you’re really 

looking at doing is creating, let’s say, a chemical sponge to soak 

carbon dioxide, and over the course of that reaction, you undergo 

a transformation to produce limestone. 

Now, an important thing to point out about this upcycling process is the reason it turns out to be very attractive is it gives you 

a strategy for both avoiding and reducing the amount of carbon dioxide you would produce otherwise by producing traditional ordinary Portland cement. That’s an important thing because what you 

can do with this approach is, you can create an offtake partnership 

so essentially a power producer can work alongside a cement producer since both of them emit CO2 but one produces a material 

that can potentially soak up CO2. You let these industries actually 

start to work together. 

I think the sector-level synergies are extremely important to 

catalyze because as you go forward and we look at this idea of trying to create new synergies and new efficiencies in the energy 

space, we need to get industries that were otherwise not, let’s say, 

correlated with each other, interacting with each other. 

Mr. BABIN. All right. What is—if this was a widely deployed 

process throughout the land, what would be the impact? Would it 

be dramatic? Would it be a partial impact? Please let me know 

what you think there. 

Mr. SANT. Sure. That’s a very good question actually. So if we 

assume global scaling of some of these processes which utilize carbon dioxide, landscape analysis that we have done and others have 

done shows that you can basically use up to about ten percent of 

global CO2 emissions, right, so it’s on the order of let’s say three 

or four billion tons. Now, ten percent seems like a small number. 

It’s actually a really important number because what you’re really 

showing is a value system and a pathway to creating value that 

you cannot utilize otherwise. 

So when you look at concrete, which is one way that you can utilize CO2, or plastic, which is another way to do it, by creating 

value, you show that there’s opportunity where there was none, 
78 

and I think that’s something which is important, for example, for 

industry to be able to see because we are very often used to seeing 

carbon dioxide as a negative. What we’re trying to do is really create this positive perception which is associated with revenue generation because that helps you really create longer-term pathways 

which are associated with more risk which do of course render a 

more permanent solution but you want to get points up on the 

board before you go for the big ones every time. 

Mr. BABIN. Okay. And then just to maybe enhance what you just 

said, in what way can your upcycling technology potentially surpass more traditional CO2 utilization such as through the use of 

captured carbon for enhanced oil recovery, for example? 

Mr. SANT. So one of the really important things about the work 

that we’re doing is that we can utilize flue gas without any preprocessing or without any post-processing, so an important aspect 

as to what really drives up the cost that’s associated with carbon 

capture as an example utilization is lots of these processes require 

enriched or purified CO2. The way our process is designed is we 

can basically take flue gas that comes out of a stack in a power 

plant or in a cement plant or a petrochemical facility and use it directly as a reagent in our chemical process. I think this is an extremely important point because the cost of capture is really a limiting step at this point, and if you can start to utilize flue gas without a capture cost, now you really start to see some economic viability that can start to model these processes. 

Mr. BABIN. Okay. Thank you very much, and I yield back, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Babin. 

And the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer, is recognized. 

Mr. BEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. 

Dr. DeWitte, I was fascinated by all your conversation, your work 

on the small nuclear reactors. I was sitting next to Congresswoman 

Jackie Rosen from Nevada, and she was sort of—I don’t want to 

mischaracterize but instantaneously anxious about the fuel. So I 

pointed out the first page of your testimony about how you’re 

reusing fuels from some of the other places including the plutonium. At the end of the day, is storage still a problem or an issue 

that has to be solved with respect to the small nuclear reactors? 

Dr. DEWITTE. In terms of waste storage? 

Mr. BEYER. Yes. 

Dr. DEWITTE. It’s a different problem but it’s a very much smaller problem in the sense that the output effectively is going to be 

something that’s radioactive for nominally 300 years at most, at 

most, and a very small volume of what you would produce otherwise. So really, what we’re doing today is we’re taking fuel. We’re 

only extracting about one percent of the total energy content in 

that fuel and then we’re putting it—trying to dispose of it. What 

we’re trying—that’s what we’re doing today. What we’re trying to 

do and what other fast reactors can do is take that and extract basically the rest of that 99 percent energy content out. Now, there’s 

still some radioactive material at the end of the day but you can 

safely store that. It only needs to last for a couple hundred years 

before it decays away to nothing. At that point you can have it vitrified. You can make glasses out of that you could drink out of, in 
79 

fact, so it would be perfectly safe. It’s a very manageable problem 

at that point. 

Mr. BEYER. The sense I’m getting from your testimony is that the 

development of your fast reactor technology to scale could solve a 

lot of the disposal problems of the bigger reactors that we have already. 

Dr. DEWITTE. Absolutely. It changes it from a problem to really 

an opportunity because now you have a bunch of fuel that we could 

power the United States on for hundreds of years, like all of the 

United States power needs, so it’s a phenomenal opportunity. 

Mr. BEYER. You talked a little bit I know before about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and they’ve been adapting to small 

rather than big. How about the insurance companies, you know, 

the liability and—are they still treating you like Three Mile Island 

or—— 

Dr. DEWITTE. That’s an excellent question, and I think it’s a 

question that needs to become more prevalent and mature going 

forward. There’s a lot of differences between small reactors and advanced reactors in terms of what the potential risks are, the potential consequences, and therefore what the liability should be and 

what the insurance capabilities need to be, and generally it’s a 

much smaller footprint, it’s a much smaller need, so the current 

framework in some ways and in some cases is kind of—it’s inefficient. It’s not set to actual technology capabilities today, and that 

needs to modernize, and I think that conversation in general needs 

to pick up. Frankly, now is the time to do that. 

Mr. BEYER. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Kumaraswamy, I’ve had many conversations with folks in 

your business about the exciting role that batteries can play, especially when you think about power plants as a step by step. Do you 

see this as also promoting clean energy, reducing emissions, having 

a role in a 21st century electric grid? 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. Absolutely. I think the way we see is that 

it gives us the capability to recouple the demand and the supply 

piece, which gives us transformational capabilities, right, and so 

again, like I said, it has significant potential for you to think about 

increasing the efficiency that we operate the existing system with, 

both in the general and the transformation and distribution side. 

It’s a question that we get asked all the time about whether storage or generation or transmission or distribution, and it’s all of the 

above really, right, because it is able to play into all of those areas 

that we have traditionally assumed to be pretty bifurcated. And 

like I said previously, when we are faced with a future where the 

baseload generation plants are facing retirement decisions and 

we’re continuing to add more renewable sources into the grid, 

there’s a need that you have to add more peaking capacity into the 

grid, and the most cost-effective way of providing the peaking capacity is through deployment of large-scale energy storage. 

Mr. BEYER. Are you working with Elon Musk and all these electric cars and steering wheels—cars without steering wheels, things 

like that? 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. I buy some of the products. 

Mr. BEYER. Dr. Venky, you know, one of the criticisms that’s 

often come from my friends on the other side about Department of 
80 

Energy was picking winners and losers and interfering with the 

free market by crowding out private investment, but you worked at 

Bell Labs, you worked at Sandia National Laboratory, how do you 

perceive this or what’s been your experience about the federal government having a role in these things? 

Mr. NARAYANAMURTI. Well, I—first of all, there are many forms 

in which you can actually interact with industry. With the early 

stages, take ARPA–E. They are having wide solicitations. They ask 

for a lot of different proposals. They get reviews of them, and obviously some people get selected, some don’t. This is true for even 

academia. So it’s a very quite robust process but your risk case is 

not going to be perfect. In a sense, you must pick winners and losers, so to speak, and hopefully the ARPA–E program managers are 

wise enough that—and long term of course—so I just don’t see that 

argument at all as long as the process is fair and this is how it is 

done. It’s always a judgment question. This is true. I complain 

when my grant is not approved. Was it unfair to me? You know, 

as long as the process was robust. 

So the other feature which I think is important is there are 

many different kinds. There can be joint agreements with industry 

where they’re actually putting skin in the game and say we want 

your help. There’s cooperative research and development agreements. So we should allow for different forms and different industries but the early-stage part, I don’t see that as an issue. Even in 

the very long range, as long as we have an open process and we 

have this thing properly documented, that would be great. 

And the Loan Guarantee program has been under debate. That’s 

the one where you can actually have a serious argument. It of 

course has to be done with much greater care because the amount 

of investment is huge. 

Mr. BEYER. Thank you, Doctor, very much. 

Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Beyer. 

And the gentleman from Kansas, Mr. Marshall, is recognized for 

his questions. 

Mr. MARSHALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My first question’s for 

Dr. Sant. Dr. Sant, Chairman Smith and I had the opportunity to 

recently see what we believe is the country’s largest 3D printer at 

Wichita State University, and one of the technologies they showed 

us was additive manufacturing to the 3D printing, and they described it as a potential game changer for manufacturing. Can you 

talk a little bit about how you think they could use this additive 

technology to manufacturing? Would it help you scale up your technology? 

Mr. SANT. Yes. So actually we are working on additive manufacturing, specifically related to construction systems. In fact, there’s 

great opportunities. An important part of what we’re working on, 

and I think we’ve stumbled into this but it’s turned out to be a 

major opportunity. The material that we’re working with is much 

easier and must better suited for additive manufacturing than traditional concrete, and this turns out to be quite an advantage for 

a variety of reasons. So traditional concrete that amongst the poorest what you call strength-to-weight ratios of synthetic materials, 

using additive manufacturing components lets you use materials a 
81 

lot more effectively so if you imagine that you can produce structural elements—beams, columns and slabs—and take them out to 

a construction site and start to assemble them kind of like a large 

Lego set that has major impacts on the construction sector because 

it really starts to improve construction productivity. If you can 

imagine—very often we heard of construction projects being delayed. If you can imagine you’re taking prebuilt sections out on site 

and starting to assemble those, that’s a much more efficient process 

to be able to construct with much more efficient systems so additive manufacturing clearly in our minds is the path forward as far 

as construction goes. 

Mr. MARSHALL. Well, thanks, and what I’m going to always remember is they showed us the structure of wings for airplanes. 

They of course manufacture lots of airplane stuff in Wichita, and 

they basically told the computer to make it stronger and it ended 

up looking like a bird’s wing and just the micro structure of it. 

I’ll go to Mr. Kumaraswamy next. Battery storage is a huge issue 

obviously. A third of the energy in Kansas is now generated via 

wind energy, and the storage of that wind energy is always the 

challenge, and we hope to—we are already an energy exporter from 

Kansas, so just talk a little bit about your technology. As I understand and read your process, it’s a—your batteries are side to side 

to side. What’s the future look like for battery storage or what’s 

your vision and where do you think we’re going with this? 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. Sure. That’s a great question. We—the product that we have, which is called Advancion, is an energy storage 

platform. We are not a battery manufacturer company so we actually buy batteries from many different certified suppliers. It’s a 

platform that we have that we have developed that actually has 

some unique advantages in terms of serving the grid. It’s pretty 

modular in terms of the architecture that we have come up with, 

and again, we are in a leadership position in deploying energy storage solutions both nationally in the United States and globally. 

For the specific issue that you mentioned, there are significant 

applications of energy storage, so if you have intermittent variable 

generation, one of the issues that you have is making sure that the 

time in which the generation actually is produced aligns with the 

peak times in which the demand occurs on the grid condition, 

right? And so oftentimes what we see with both wind and solar 

generation is that there’s a misalignment of when the generation 

production happens and when the demand for electricity happens 

in the late evening hours when people actually come back home, 

and that’s one of the applications of energy storage is the ability 

to actually move all of the generation that’s happening in the early 

afternoon periods towards the early evening periods when the demand hits its peak, and we are currently deploying some of these 

longer-duration storage projects also. 

We have a project that’s currently under construction in California. It’s 100-megawatt, 400-megawatt-hour energy storage 

project so it’s 100 megawatt, 4 hours of duration project. So think 

about moving your generation from the 4 p.m. hour to the 8 p.m. 

hour. That can be completely done, and we think that it’s the most 

cost-effective way in which we can accomplish that objective. 
82 

Mr. MARSHALL. Are these still just commercial batteries side to 

side to side to side or what’s that look like? 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. It’s lithium-ion batteries. The Advancion 

platform that I mentioned is largely agnostic to technology. We basically look at whatever technology makes the most amount of 

sense for our customers, which are utilities in most cases, but to 

date what we have found is that lithium ion has the best amount 

of efficiency and cost-effectiveness right now, and as far as we can 

see, that still applies at least in the next 2- to three-year time 

frame with the synergies that lithium-ion technology has with the 

transportation sector on the electric vehicle side. It still continues 

to be the technology that we are anticipating will provide the characteristics that can be helpful for the grid. 

Mr. MARSHALL. Thank you. I wanted to talk nuclear engineering 

but I’m out of time. Thank you, and I yield back. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Marshall. 

And the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Crist, thank you for your 

patience. 

Mr. CRIST. Not at all. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you to all the panelists for being here today to share 

your unique perspectives on energy technology research and development. 

I’m from Florida, the Sunshine State, where our energy is our 

economy and our environment. Protecting our natural resources is 

of the utmost importance to myself and the constituents I represent. That’s why I’m extremely interested in increasing the use 

of clean energy to meet our environmental needs, particularly in 

the area of solar. 

Mr. Kumaraswamy, from my understanding, better energy storage technology could help the United States to greatly expand our 

portfolio of zero-emission energy sources. Can you discuss how energy storage can be combined with renewables like solar and wind 

to help reach our clean energy and environmental goals? 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. Absolutely. Just also as a note that the 

United States actually has a leadership position in terms of deployment of grid-scale energy storage. I think as of Bloomberg data 

that’s a couple of months old right now, we have more than 30 to 

40 percent of the global energy storage installations across the 

whole world. So it’s something that we should be proud of. 

And energy storage, again, you know, it’s one of those things 

where there’s significant potential for using that along with renewable energy technologies like solar and wind. AES actually is currently also developing a project in Kauai at the end of Hawaii 

which is a combined solar plus storage project, right, and so it’s a 

combination of solar technology and battery-based energy storage 

technology to make sure that you almost create a firm block of 

power that can be developed to the grid. Like I was mentioning 

previously, one of the things that you had to worry about if you 

have intermittent variable generation is the misalignment of when 

the generation occurs in the system and when the demand actually 

peaks, and storage is the glue that can help you bridge that gap 

that you have in the system. 

And the other issue is also that in several cases what we see is 

that when you keep adding more variable generation to the system, 
83 

there’s a tendency for us to think about adding more peaking gas 

plants to balance all of the generation. In our view, it’s not the 

most prudent choice to add capacity into the grid that runs for like 

a fraction of the year, right? If you think about peaking gas plants 

that we have across the country, the average capacity factor of that 

is something like 5 to six percent of the year. In an economy where 

we’re moving towards shared services in pretty much every commodity that we think about. If we think about Air BnB on the hotel 

side or Uber for the transportation side, we are thinking about 

shared services, right? So in that economy, we think that if you 

make multibillion-dollar investments into peaking gas plants but 

run for a fraction of the year, that’s just not in the best interest 

of ratepayers, and I think storage would be a lost more cost-effective in performing that function. 

Mr. CRIST. Is the same type of energy storage equally suited to 

grids powered by different energy sources, wind versus solar versus 

natural gas versus coal-fired power plants or would it make more 

sense to use several different types of energy storage? 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. The storage itself is agnostic again to the 

type of generation that you have. It just gives you the capability 

to store energy and release it at a later point in time, right? And 

so it’s agnostic to whether it’s coal or natural gas or any other 

source that you actually use to charge but again, in many markets 

that we have gone into, we have seen significant benefits including 

environmental benefits that additional storage brings to the grid. 

Part of the reason is also that it lets you optimize the existing 

portfolio of generation plants to operate more efficiently, right, because as the demand keeps changing, power plants keep moving up 

and down, basically they’re consuming more fuel or less fuel to balance the needs of the grid, right? If you add storage into the system, the storage actually is able to take up the job of moving up 

and down to balance the demand conditions, letting the existing 

power plants operate much more efficiently which means that 

they’re running at better heat ray blocks, at better efficiency 

blocks, which means that their emissions go down, so that’s a significant benefit that we have seen in some of these markets. 

Mr. CRIST. Well, thank you. It’s clear to me that we need greater 

energy storage in America. What can the federal government, Congress in particular, do to help encourage additional research and 

development in this field, in your view? 

Mr. KUMARASWAMY. Like I mentioned in my testimony, I think 

on the lithium-ion side of the house, I think the technology is stable. There’s a lot of private capital that’s chasing more innovation 

like improving cell density and production and costs and all of that, 

so I think private capital will continue to push that forward. 

There is a significant role for us to make investments in earlystage R&D on other promising battery chemistries that have greater potential in the near future like extending the duration in which 

you can actually storage energy, right? So I think that’s an area 

that the government should continue to focus on. 

And I think the second and most important area is also that we 

want greater recognition of the benefits that storage brings to the 

grid, particularly for applications like peaking capacity. When we 

go and talk to regulators across the country, it’s one of those com-
84 

mon questions that we bring up all the time, which is how does it 

compare with a peaking gas plant, and it’s an apples-to-oranges 

type of comparison because a peaking gas plant has to be turned 

on to provide a service and then it shuts off, and when it shuts off, 

it can’t provide a service. In contrast, energy storage is a 24 by 7 

resource. It’s connected to the grid all the time. So when you need 

that peaking capacity, it’s able to discharge and provide you that 

capacity, and for the remainder of the day or the remainder of the 

time, it’s actually able to provide for other ancillary services that 

are needed for the grid. 

And so the other area of focus should be continued investments 

in the national labs to make sure that there’s awareness of all of 

the benefits that storage brings to the grid. 

Mr. CRIST. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I 

yield back. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Crist. 

And again, thank you all, our experts, for being here today. The 

testimony to me was very informative and very valuable to us. 

The record will stay open for a couple of weeks in case Members 

have additional written questions they want to submit, and that 

concludes our business, and we stand adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:12 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 
(85) 

Appendix I 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
86 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Dr. Venky Narayanamurti 
87 

art light source filcilities in Germany and Japan. China, Japan and Germany have made 

major investments in targeted areas of R&D in myriads of emerging renewable 

technologies. like battery and EY technology and are pushing the envelope in terms of 

materials characterization and testing including supercomputing. Some of the most 

advanced super computers are now produced in China and Japan. If we want to remain at 

the forefront of R&D we have to continuously upgrade the research infrastructure, 

especially instrumentation facilities. China's investment in R&D is near 3%ofGDP and 

is emerging as one of the key producers of research papers and new technology. 
88 

Æ 

HOUSE COMMTITEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

"Energy Innovation: Letting Technology Lead" 

Dr. Venky Narayanamurti, Benjamin Peirce Research Professor of Technology and Public 

Policy, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University 

Question submitted by Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL) 

2. If DOE were to shift to only funding "basic'' or ·'early stage" research. as the 

administration has suggested, this would likely mean abandoning or scaling back decades 

of investment in programs that focus on applied research and commercialization such as 

SBIR, Energy !-Corps. the Energy Innovation Hubs. and the Federal Laboratory 

Consortium for Tech Transfer, programs that have traditionally enjoyed strong bipartisan 

supp011. 

a. Can you speculate what the impact of this change would be on DOE's ability to 

carry out its mission and on the industries that rely on innovations developed at 

DOE to produce new products and create jobs'? 

Again, I refer you to my written testimony and some of my earlier remarks. An 

important part of DOE's mission is technology transfer and as I often say. technology 

transfer is a body-contact spol1. Private industry can only utilize government funded 

R&D through a continuous stream of mutual collaboration. partnerships and 

interaction. Recent DOE constructs such as energy innovation hubs. ARPA-E, and 

organizational efforts( single undersecretary for Science and Energy) to facilitate 

technology transfer in my view, are vital if we are ever to reap the full benefits of 

government supported R&D. In my written testimony I gave examples of independent 

;-..JRC studies of the DOE Applied Offices and their impact in creating technologies 

and the new job creating industries. 

The level of industry participation should obviously increase with the maturation of 

technology. l believe strong arguments can be made for government's role in late 

stage commercialization in very selected areas where the huge capital costs. strong 

·'Public Goods/health and environment benefits", or necessary safety regulations 

necessitates such support . e.g technology for carbon capture and storage from coal 

plants. or further development of Nuclear Power among others. 

At the Harvard Kennedy School I organized a workshop 2011 which brought leaders 

from academia, the government and industry to debate this question. This workshop 

highlighted the key conditions necessary tor success in. You can find a comprehensive 

discussion of this issue at this 

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