Biden's technology push to combat climate change comes into partial focus

The White House is taking the first steps to creating a new cross-agency federal R&D organization for climate technologies, but there's plenty we still don't know about the effort.Why it matters: Biden's overall climate plan calls for a much more muscular federal role in scaling up research and commercialization of next-wave tech, even as it looks to speed deployment of existing low-carbon sources.Driving the news: Thursday brought the announcement of a "Climate Innovation Working Group." The working group is co-led by the White House offices of Domestic Climate Policy, Science of Technology and Policy, and Management and Budget.Part of its mission is to "advance" plans to stand up Biden's proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency-Climate, or ARPA-C.The big picture: The White House said the innovation group will focus on advancing and lowering costs of a wide set of technologies including...Carbon-neutral construction materialsMuch cheaper energy storage systemsCarbon-free hydrogenAir conditioning and refrigeration that does not use planet-warming gasesZero-carbon heat and industrial processes for heavy industries like cementAdvanced soil management and other farming practices that remove CO2Ways to retrofit existing industrial and power plants with CO2 captureWhat we don't know: If the White House will ask Congress to formally create and fund ARPA-C, which would give it more permanence if lawmakers do it. A White House official said, "more specifics are forthcoming."The intrigue: ARPA-C may sound familiar because of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) created under 2007 legislation and got its first funding in 2009 (and itself is modeled after the military's DARPA). Similarities between the Energy Department's ARPA-E and the ARPA-C concept extend beyond just the sound. "The precise boundaries between the two ARPAs aren’t entirely clear," MIT Technology Review reports."[S]ome energy observers are confused about why the administration wants to expend political capital trying to set up and fund a new research agency rather than focusing on boosting capital for existing programs," the piece notes.Speaking of ARPA-E, yesterday the Energy Department announced a $100 million solicitation for proposals, calling it the "first of billions of dollars of DOE R&D opportunities to be announced this year." Go deeper: Biden ushers in historical turn on clean energy and climate change

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