House and Senate lock horns over Arpa-E future

The House of Representatives and the Senate are in a tug-of-war over the future of the United States Department of Energy’s high-risk, high-reward research agency Arpa-E.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy incubates renewable energy projects, however, the House Budget Committee has scrapped it from the fiscal year 2018 budget as part of cuts to the DoE budget.

In its budget document, the House called the agency’s mission a “misuse of federal research dollars” and demonstrative of the Obama administration’s “crony capitalism that picks winners and losers in support of its ‘green energy’ agenda”.