By: Jim Greenberger via The Energy Collective

Next week the 2011 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit will be held in Washington, D.C.  The Summit is a much-anticipated annual conference highlighting the development of next generation energy technologies in the United States and the Department of Energy’s flagship Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), which provides critical financial support for those technologies.

The Summit will convene at a time of considerable uncertainty.  Although the Obama Administration’s FY 2012 budget proposes to increase funding for ARPA-E to $650 million, up from the $389 million last appropriated in FY 2009, H.R. 1, the continuing budget resolution proposed by House Republicans, cuts the ARPA-E budget to a mere $50 million.

It is hard to tell what is policy and what is posturing in the budgetary Donnybrook unfolding in Washington.  Optimists hold that that if bi-partisan consensus can be reached on anything…

Read more about Alternative Energy here