TODAY’S STUDY: THE BEST WAYS TO DO NEW ENERGY

In the last part of the report highlighted below is an observation that is one of the most salient bipartisan observations of this tempestuous time: "Business as usual will not work." Whether the justification is energy security or enviromental concern, almost nobody rejects the call for a change in the way energy is obtained and used.

From climate change deniers to climate change activists, sensible citizens of this modern world therefore agree that ivestments in New Energy research is money well spent. Most acknowledge that finding the right new ways to power and move and warm and cool the people of this good earth is the ultimate gamechanger.

That little gets done is due not to disagreement over the need for action but over what action is wisest. There are 10 recommendations below that hold the potential to move the energy establishment from gridlock to greatness. It is time to get to work.

Best Practices in Merit Review; A Report to the U.S. Department of Energy
James Turner, December 2010 (Association of Public and Land Grant Universities)

Introduction and Background

Reducing atmospheric carbon emissions to a level where they no longer threaten the environment is an immense worldwide technological challenge. It requires ending the growth of carbon emissions in the near future, while as quickly as possible creating and implementing new technologies to dramatically reduce carbon emissions in a way that preserves our quality of life. Failure in this effort means a diminished standard of living and a degraded environment. Success will require the development and deployment of new energy technologies at a pace unheard of in the past. The early phases of this challenge will disproportionately depend on energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. This, in turn, will require the U.S. Department of Energy’’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), with its strong in-house research program and history of funding a large portion of our nation's conservation and renewable energy research, to step up to the challenge.

On Tuesday, January 26, 2010, at the request of EERE, experts from across the government and the private sector gathered in Washington, DC for the EERE Peer Review Best Practices Workshop to discuss how their organizations identify the most promising research and development projects and how they expeditiously progress from concept to deployment. The goal was to assess the applicability of public and private sector best practices to EERE as it readies to re-engineer its processes to permit identification, development, and transfer to the private sector of a robust set of technologies in time to meet U.S. carbon reduction targets.

In opening remarks, Henry Kelly noted several recent studies had criticized U.S. government-funded research programs for not taking enough risks, not funding highrisk/high-payoff research, and not providing appropriate opportunities to young, innovative investigators during the prime of their creativity. He articulated the need to identify grant selection practices to mitigate those tendencies, as well as the desire to identify other ways EERE could improve its R&D management practices.

Conference participants made clear that traditional basic research, as practiced successfully by the DOE Office of Science (SC), and mission-oriented R&D, as conducted by EERE, have significant differences.

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William Bonvillian pointed out in the keynote address that Vannevar Bush, the author of the original model tying basic research linearly to new products and processes, did not consider his construct to be an accurate description of how research leads to innovative technologies. Rather, it was a calculated ploy to save the university research establishment after World War II, then largely funded by the military, when DOD retrenchment from applied research was an inevitable part of dismantling the war effort. While basic knowledge and technological applications are interdependent, they do not have common DNA. Research undertaken to satisfy one's curiosity and thereby increase basic understanding in an area of knowledge is fundamentally different from research and development that from the beginning is aimed directly at meeting specific mission critical needs in a specific timeframe. Basic and applied researchers approach their work very differently. It is not an accident that basic science education generally occurs in Schools of Arts and Sciences while applied science education is often found within Schools of Engineering.

Differences between basic and applied research programs can begin with the review of funding proposals. In basic research, merit review procedures are focused on taking the time to find the most promising line of research. In applied research, with it shorter time horizons, there is faster decision-making, yet just as much need to find out-of-the-box solutions to problems. The mission-oriented goals and shorter time horizons of applied research make it necessary to guard against favoring proposals of established researchers that promise safe, incremental advance over innovative, high-risk proposals, including those proposed by young scientists not experienced in grant-writing or new businesses, that if successful have the potential to move much further towards achieving program goals.

The deliverables and timelines for basic and applied research are also different. In basic research, the goal is to expand knowledge, and success occurs when novel results are published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and through citation become accepted by the scientific community. Products and processes emerging from basic research are incidental; sometimes a tool developed to conduct the research turns out to have other uses, and sometimes a research result serendipitously points the way to a novel commercial product or process. In contrast, in applied, mission-oriented research programs, the goal is meeting a specific agency or societal need in a cost-effective and timely manner. Success is agency utilization or commercial acceptance: customers must want the product or process and be able to afford it. A more elegant solution that breaks new ground scientifically won't help if it is too expensive or not available when needed. Even when new fundamental understandings are needed to solve an applied research problem, the solution is reached by efficiently working around the impediment to achieve the program goal in a timely manner. Fully understanding the underlying science, while desirable, is not necessary if the solution works.

Since time is of the essence in applied research, efficient R&D management processes are essential to program success. Kaigham ““Ken”” Gabriel made it very clear that DARPA's success at innovation is possible only because creative, innovative, and goal-oriented individuals are able to achieve timeliness on both the technical and the administrative sides of the organization, and because his agency uses procedures not typically found in government to streamline R&D management and administrative processes. Therefore, Kelly's call for a broad conversation related to R&D management was prescient. If EERE is to meet 21st century energy challenges, EERE must go beyond best practices in merit review, to best practices in human resources, procurement, contracting, public-private cooperation, and technology transfer as well.

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Conclusions and Recommendations

As part of its agreement to set up the underlying best practices workshop, the APLU Energy Programs staff agreed to shape the results of the conference into a set of conclusions and recommendations. Therefore, this section of the report should be considered the views of the APLU Energy Programs staff and not that of the Department of Energy or of any of its employees.

The Administration’’s goals of achieving 17 percent reduction in 2005 carbon emissions levels by 2020, 42 percent by 2030, and 83 percent by 2050, require that DOE and EERE applied research programs develop and deploy transformative, cost-effective energy technologies at a much larger scale and on a much shorter timescale than they have in the past. Business as usual will not work. Identifying teams capable of quickly and effectively delivering in this environment is critical to success. Expeditiously making funding decisions, working closely with grantees to ensure projects stay on track, and achieving an effective handoff to companies are all key to meeting the Administration’s goals in a timely fashion. This conference explored the merit review and selection practices of public and private, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. We heard from Federal government agencies who support basic and applied research and technology development, universities with a record of success in technology transfer, and companies that commercialize energy technologies. The conclusions drawn from the conference are documented below as well as recommendations that EERE should consider to strengthen its R&D management processes.

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Conclusions

There is no one-size-fits-all merit review process for choosing Federal grantees. Federal government organizations have been successful using classical peer review - in which external experts, who are conducting research themselves, evaluate basic R&D proposals. However, a number of Federal applied research programs have followed ARPA’s lead and have moved away from peer review in their grantee selection processes where the goal is to solve real-world problems by developing and commercializing nonconventional technological solutions within a tight time frame.

Federal agencies need to employ knowledgeable and experienced scientists and engineers as the program officials who make the final grantee selections in both basic and applied research, but the type of expertise required differs. SC has a supplemental regulation, 10 CFR 605, that supersedes 10 CFR 600 for its programs. EERE, despite 10 CFR 600 being less relevant to its mission, does not have its own regulatory supplement to ensure any merit review it undertakes is time sensitive and in keeping with the underlying principle that applied research needs to produce solutions to specific problems in an expedited manner.

Robust merit review practices alone do not ensure successful R&D results. The breadth and diversity of EERE programs, which cover many different technologies, and the pipeline of applied research to technology development, demonstration and deployment, require that all R&D management processes be efficient and effective.

This includes:
- streamlined hiring procedures to acquire needed expertise quickly;
- integrated web-based proposal submission and evaluation tools;
- effective communication of funding opportunities and evaluation criteria to both applicants and reviewers;
- fast starts for unproven but promising concepts; and
- lean business practices, including streamlined contracting procedures to get funding in place quickly and a rigorous set of program reviews that get more business oriented as the project moves closer to deployment.

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Recommendations

1. EERE should develop its own merit review guidelines geared to EERE’’s unique mix of programs, including the flexibility to move quickly, using a DARPA-like internal review approach when appropriate, and to bring in external expertise as needed to supplement internal expertise either in initial selection or project reviews. Federal expertise may be sufficient to evaluate and select some applied research projects, for example, while technology development efforts that are closer to commercialization may require business expertise that is not available in-house. DOE should look to concepts used elsewhere in the government, such as hiring university and industry personnel as temporary government employees to supplement government expertise to avoid delays in grant-making and program management.

2. To increase opportunities for outside-the-box ideas, EERE should consider supplementing its targeted solicitations with broad agency announcements. BAAs also enable ideas to be captured continuously, rather than in the 2-3 year cycles common to most EERE funding opportunity announcements.

3. Increased use of white papers, concept papers, and/or pre-proposals, possibly using an interactive process if time permits, in which the applicant gets feedback from the Federal manager and the Federal manager learns the capabilities of the applicant, could help to streamline the proposal submission process and increase proposals’ responsiveness to EERE needs.

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4. Design processes and/or initiatives that promote innovative, outside the box concepts, and provide funds for early career scientists or engineers. These could include a young investigator program, seed funding to establish feasibility of technologies that are unproven but innovative and promising, and/or ways to integrate basic and applied research projects.

5. Speed up administrative procedures in light of applied research timetables and the President's milestones. Think through which of the special accommodations that have been made for ARPA-E also would increase success at EERE. Make the reforms necessary to streamline and speed up contracting and other support activities including the availability of Other Transactions Authority when traditional contracting authority will be too slow and cumbersome to permit timely commercialization of resultant products and processes.

6. Be open to alternate routes to technology deployment. Consider investing EERE resources in a seedling program that provides easily approved initial funding for promising ideas that are unproven but, if ready, could be launched through startups and venture capital. Also, be sensitive to ways that DOE can partner in high payoff opportunities that are too risky for companies to take on unassisted. Carefully review DARPA and ONR policies for other funding strategies that quickly bring technology solutions to end users. Be open to use of graduate students and postdoctoral students as part of energy development and deployment teams. One of the best ways to enhance technology transfer is to imbed part of the expertise in students who upon graduation are available to go into industry and help with the implementation of the technology.

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7. Streamline the Department of Energy.’s hiring process to reduce the time from job announcement to start date and advertise in appropriate venues such as scientific journals, trade magazines and Monster.com. Explore the hiring approach and special hiring authorities of other Federal agencies, particularly DoD, and other parts of DOE to identify best practices.

8. Enhance in-house expertise by bringing in university and industry experts under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, which provides for the temporary assignment of personnel between the Federal Government and other organizations, and allows those experts to serve as temporary Federal employees and perform Federal functions.

9. Ensure a robust in-progress review process for EERE programs so that promising projects can be identified and continued. Establish mechanisms to enhance and accelerate promising projects. Cut losses by terminating unproductive projects.

10. Explore ways to increase and accelerate transfer of technologies from universities and national laboratories to the marketplace. Conduct an analysis of cost sharing and its impact on participation in EERE programs and the commercialization of EERE technologies.