Make water not war: an ARPA-E love-in

From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner we got the line " Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink."

OK, I’ll bite. I’ll tell you what’s good about ARPA-E, and counter the arguments of my Hive Mind brethren who lament the addictive high of technology, the flawed nature of human beings, and our entrepreneur-unfriendly system to point out the many deficiencies of APRA-E solutions. I’d argue that by way of technology, ARPA-E is funding life-changing concepts that could be the path to social and psychological improvement.

ARPA-E projects aren’t just about swapping hydrocarbons for photons, there’s a recipe for social revolution tucked inside some of those technologies. And while I am aware that almost every technology-fundamentalist argument holds out this glittering carrot (social change) while ignoring the umpteen narratives of social destruction spawned by technology (the atomic bomb pretty much topping that list), frankly, as Sandra duly pointed out, none of the funded ARPA-E technologies are as novel as nuclear fission (which exposes another set of problems, as she discusses).

Most of the APRA-E projects are devoted to removing roadblocks impeding ideas that have been kicking around for a long time. We haven’t given up on these ideas because their promise is so tantalizing, so revolutionary. While none of the ARPA-E projects are going to overhaul science, the incremental breakthroughs they could produce would overhaul the resources and restrictions we currently work within. They are societal game-changers if not scientifically radical.

Imagine if we could turn seawater into freshwater. That’s a quest that goes back millennium, and for good reason. Some 97 percent of the Earth’s water is salty and undrinkable, a fact that is coming increasingly into focus as our fights and fears over limited freshwater supplies mount in the face of climate change and a growing world population. There’s no question that people will go to war over water, which makes it hard to capture in a phrase how drastically an inexpensive, durable desalination technology could change the world.

ARPA-E is funding a California company called nanOasis whose co-founder, Dr. Jason Holt, discovered that carbon nanotubes can filter saltwater much more efficiently than other membrane materials. This company’s idea could reduce the energy demands of reverse osmosis by 30-50 percent, making the freshwater it yields potentially 40 percent cheaper than most desalinized water.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t conserve water, that we wouldn’t face the pollution issues brought on by desalination, but I would rather see us fight over these issues than a scarce, essential resource—we all know who gets the short end of the stick in that battle.

How about something a little more mundane, like batteries. Lithium-ion batteries have rapidly changed our day-to-day lives by putting iPhones and other mini-computers in our hands (I know, this arguably has many downsides). ARPA-E is investing in numerous battery technologies that could hook into the grid and enable us to store intermittent wind and solar power—one the primary obstacles to replacing coal with renewables. And there’s no need to rehash the importance of weaning ourselves from coal.

Obviously ARPA-E can’t solve all our problems, but given the pittance it’s working with—compare ARPA-E’s $400 million to DARPA’s proposed 2010 budget of $3.25 billion and the bank bailout estimated at nearly a trillion dollars—and the greedy culture we inhabit, the DOE has made some prudent, reasonable investments that just might change the problems we’re fighting from dire to manageable. And those—rather than war over resources and besieged storm/drought ravaged cities—are the grounds from which positive social change grows.

By Victoria Schlesinger