Great, great, great.
Thank you, Evelyn. Evelyn, of course, was once an ARPA-E awardee herself. And thank you so much for your team bringing us together today-and really, for the first time, an ARPA-E Summit hosted in Texas.
And I just have to say to the entire ARPA-E team-some of whom have been here since the very beginning-you are the sentinels of science. The drivers of discovery. So, to the ARPA-E team: thank you so much for your service.
[Applause]
So, in September of 1962, President John F. Kennedy visited Texas to make his case that America should go to the moon.
And at stake, of course, was our nation’s courage, really, to do big things. Our reputation as the world’s great engine of innovation. Our status as a leader among nations.
And President Kennedy said these words. He said, the “challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
Today, we are neck-and-neck with our competitors in another race, which is, of course, to unlock and unleash the power of clean energy.
On the line is this $23 trillion economy globally. Larger-this energy sector-larger than the GDP of any country outside of the U.S.
We’re competing for the world’s most sought-after jobs-manufacturing jobs, by the way, that can be the beating heart of America’s heartland for the next century. We’re competing for those.
We’re competing for freedom over our future-a future where we are not going to be relying upon others to power our homes, our transportation, our business, our schools.
On the line is our pride. Our mojo.
But that’s not all.
Because this is also a race-as you all know-to save our shared home: this planet.
The people in this room are America’s best hope.
The technologies that you create will decide whether we win that race. But no pressure!
[Laughter]
It’s said that the famed French marshal Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant him a tree. Skeptical, the gardener replied, “Well, it won’t bear fruit for a hundred years.” And Lyautey said, “In that case, plant it this afternoon.”
Lucky for us, many of you planted your trees long ago.
And now, there is fruit.
So, I want to give you some examples of this to inspire the ones who are just now planting.
In 2012, Sila won its first ARPA-E award to experiment with nanotechnologies that power lithium-ion batteries.
Twelve years later, they’re building a 600,000 square foot manufacturing plant to do just that.
I visited their construction site in Moses Lake, Washington. They’re going to be producing enough silicon anode material for 140,000 EVs. They’ll create over 400 jobs in this small community. That community is so grateful.
In 2014, LanzaTech used its first ARPA-E award to help transform carbon waste into cleaner fuels and chemicals.
And now, ten years later, they’re planning to turn CO2 into sustainable ethylene on a commercial scale, with help from a $200 million DOE award.
Or take Heirloom Carbon. They were awarded half-a-million dollars from ARPA-E to alter the chemical makeup of limestone so that it can absorb carbon from the air.
And in November, I visited them in Tracy, California-the first commercial direct air capture facility in the United States. And now, Heirloom has set a goal of removing a billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2035.
Dozens of companies that started with small grants from ARPA-E to chase far-out ideas are now these large industrial players that are transforming our energy landscape.
The audacity of the scientists. The grit of the entrepreneurs. The courage of the investors. You have redefined our conceptions of what’s possible in energy.
Writing new recipes for low-carbon cement.
Mobilizing membrane technologies to cut greenhouse gases at pulp and paper mills.
Inventing the very industry for low-cost and continuous methane detection and mitigation.
The Department of Energy… we are so proud to be your partner.
We’re determined to take leaps of faith in your ideas.
And now, with unprecedented funding from President Biden’s agenda-Invest in America agenda-for large-scale demonstrations and debt financing, we’re ready to shepherd your projects through the “valleys of death”-or I guess I’m supposed to say, mountains of opportunity-to the promised land of commercialization.
And, I mean to be honest, not all of them are going to make it, right?
But that’s alright.
Because with ARPA-E, we are not swinging for singles and doubles.
We’re going for grand slams.
The worst thing that ARPA-E can be is timid.
If we’re led by fear of failure… if we fund what everyone else is funding… if we steer scientists into narrow lanes… we’re never going make that next big breakthrough. We’re never going win the clean energy race. We’ll never tackle the climate crisis.
We’ve proven the ARPA-E concept: that ideas can turn into industries. And now we need to mash the accelerator.
So, my great hope is that the future of ARPA-E will be as bold as its past.
Let’s try revolutionizing the grid with robotic worm tunneling or quantum radio frequency sensing.
Let’s try building modular data centers for AI computing that slash the power needed for cooling servers.
Let’s try catalyzing fusion reactions with subatomic particles that produce energy at even lower temperatures.
Paving the way for the private sector to make big bets. Bringing the most innovative businesses to market. Embracing failure as the first step toward success. That’s the American way.
[When] an ARPA-E awardee succeeds, the next great American company is born.
And we move a step closer toward our ambitious climate goals.
And the pride of American innovation reverberates in small towns and in big cities across the land.
All reinforcing what we have come to know about ourselves, which is that in this country, we’re unafraid to dream.
We are unwilling to be surpassed.
We are always ready to step up and save the planet for the world.
President Kennedy believed that-this quote: “As we grapple with problems without precedent in human history… the challenge… may be our salvation.”
I have every confidence it will be.
Thank you all so much, dreamers and doers.