One of the central questions yet to be answered in energy technology is how to store energy from alternative sources like solar or wind that don’t always produce power when we need it. For the Navy and Marine Corps, this is particularly important, as we move toward our established goal of at least 50% non-fossil fuel use by 2020.
Because just like in the commercial world, the steady march of technology has created a voracious appetite for ever-increasing amounts of energy. A Marine platoon in Vietnam took two or three radios on patrol, now a single squad in Afghanistan takes over ten.
Last week at the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) Innovation Summit, I announced two new joint energy initiatives between DoD and ARPA-E to begin research and development of technology to answer this energy storage question, technology that once developed, will move us a step closer to a new energy future and a new clean energy economy for the United States.
Fonte: White House