Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) announced today it was awarded a ten-year $550 million contract from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to support the advancement of high-potential, high-impact, early-stage technologies that generate, store, and use energy in entirely new ways to reduce U.S. emissions, improve energy efficiency, and increase the resiliency and reliability of the U.S. power grid. Booz Allen was instrumental in the stand up of ARPA-E in 2009 and has been a key mission partner since Day One. The company serves as primary technical and operations support to ARPA-E—an organization that, in the words of its first director Dr. Arun Majumdar, was tasked with identifying, shepherding, and accelerating “…the stuff that sounds crazy until it changes the world.”
A funding and technology agency, ARPA-E will be supported under this contract by Booz Allen to help identify energy mission needs, support an innovation ecosystem to drive emerging technology that promises to meet the nation’s energy goals—but that is too nascent for private sector investment—and then de-risk it in order to secure long-term funding and deployment for impact. This work draws from Booz Allen’s more than 50 years of support for government ARPA programs, including for health (ARPA-H), intelligence (IARPA) and defense (DARPA); and more than 10 years specifically supporting ARPA-E; in addition to Booz Allen’s own corporate venture capital arm, Booz Allen Ventures, which identifies and invests in early-stage technology poised to transform mission outcomes for the public sector.
“We are proud to be ARPA-E’s partner in powering the critical mission to enhance the U.S. competitive position in science and technology, improve environmental wellbeing, and solve the most pressing climate challenges using novel technology,” said Mike Miller, leader of the company’s ARPA-E work and its broader civilian energy business. “Booz Allen empowers its people to change the world, and our team is doing just that—upsetting the status quo in energy technology, operating like a startup, and advancing an ecosystem where not-yet-invented technology can rise and be deployed for good.”
Under the contract, Booz Allen’s multidisciplinary team, which includes over 50 Ph.D.s, will support the entire lifecycle of early-stage technology for ARPA-E with an emphasis on supporting ARPA-E awardees’ efforts to derisk their emerging technologies. Leveraging deep mission knowledge, Booz Allen will identify climate and energy challenges that would benefit from emerging technology, then work to build and support an ecosystem to innovate—including developing competitions to fuel innovation, like “Shark Tank”—followed by technical reviews and funding to make true impact.
More than 160 Booz Allen employees support the company’s ARPA-E work, bringing a whole-of-organization approach to the portfolio through its engineers, scientists, analysts, and project managers with capabilities including digital/IT transformation, project management, finance, and AI and machine learning (ML). Work on the contract will take place in Washington, DC, at ARPA-E’s headquarters.
Booz Allen has been instrumental in recent ARPA-E successes including the first-ever hybrid-electric flight to Alaska, the first commercial direct Air Capture facility, the world’s first dedicated manufacturing line for thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells, and more. Since Booz Allen helped stand up ARPA-E and create its technology-to-market model:
- 230 projects have attracted more than $12.1 billion in private-sector, follow-on funding
- More than 150 new companies have been formed
- 7,318 peer-reviewed articles have been published
- 1,120 new U.S. patents and 405 licenses have been created
“With this work, we’re not looking for merely incremental improvements to our energy innovation ecosystem—we’re seeking game-changing, disruptive solutions that radically improve U.S. economic prosperity, national security, and environmental wellbeing,” said Ben Getto, principal at Booz Allen and program manager of the ARPA-E work. “Booz Allen is proud to be ARPA-E’s mission partner in empowering America’s energy researchers and technologists with funding, technical assistance, and market-readiness efforts to quickly catalyze cutting-edge areas of energy research for the betterment of our world.”
This win builds on Booz Allen’s growing portfolio of energy and climate-related efforts including the re-building of a climate-resilient Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama, Florida, using digital twin technology; leveraging AI and ML to derive climate intelligence to track and make sense of data to make timely, scientifically grounded decisions in climate change-impacted areas of policy, mission, and business; and long-standing support for energy, resources, and utilities clients.
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