Head of new federal clean energy agency visits LI

The director of a new federal agency, whose goal is to stimulate a U.S. clean energy industry, visited Long Island for the first time Tuesday and received a genuine Long Island reception: He was held up in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

Then, Arun Majumdar, director of the 18-month-old Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, faced another mob scene, this one at Farmingdale State College, where anxious technology executives thrust business cards at him in hopes of getting his immediate attention for their projects.

"It's fun," Majumdar said, as he took some cards and tried to respond to questions after a brief talk at the college to about 100 people in an event organized by Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington).

Israel arranged for Majumdar's visit to help acquaint the Island's energy executives with the new agency, which is under the U.S. Energy Department.

Majumdar also had some news to deliver: ARPA-E will be making its third round of financial grants in July. One Long Island company, ATK-GASL of Ronkonkoma, received a $1-million ARPA-E grant a few weeks ago.

No way of telling whether moreLong Island companies will be recipients, but by September ARPA-E will have spent the $400 million that Israel and others in Congress helped secure for it this year.

And Majumdar, formerly a top official at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California, had some unsettling words as well: The United States, he said, is behind China and other countries in the development of clean energy.

"We are in a Sputnik moment," Majumdar said, referring to the launch in October 1957 of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, the first Earth-orbiting satellite. The unanticipated launch shocked the United States, which saw itself as falling behind the Soviets in space.

"We are in the same position now," Majumdar said. But, he added, he is optimistic America cannot only catch up, but "leapfrog" the rest of the world in clean-energy development.