Here's what vaporized rocks, slabs of fungus, and a hybrid plane at the ARPA-E summit say about the future of energy.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) funds high-risk, high-reward energy research projects, and each year the agency hosts a summit where funding recipients and other researchers and companies in energy can gather to talk about what's new in the field. As I listened to presentations, met with researchers, and—especially—wandered around the showcase, I often had a vague feeling of whiplash. Standing at one booth trying to wrap my head around how we might measure carbon stored by plants, I would look over and see another group focused on making nuclear fusion a more practical way to power the world. There are plenty of tried-and-true solutions that can begin to address climate change right now: wind and solar power are being deployed at massive…