5 Policy Breakthroughs Needed to Unleash the US Innovation Economy
Two years ago, Prime Movers Lab brought together leading scientific researchers, investors, and futurists to develop a roadmap to chart when scientific breakthroughs would occur. One of the most interesting (and frustrating) problems we encountered while creating the roadmap was realizing that many of the technological breakthroughs are on the verge of occurring but could take years before they transform industries because of policy and regulatory hurdles. So we asked ourselves: What policies are standing in the way? What we can up with were the following five policy breakthroughs that even the current divided Congress could pass to accelerate America’s breakthrough science startup ecosystem:
1. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Permitting Reform
NEPA is a critical environmental law that protects communities across the country, but broad interpretations of it have thrown sand into the gears of progress. Today, it is the biggest hurdle for transforming our aging electric grid.
America’s power grid, as we know it, dates back to the 1880s. It is an amalgamation of isolated power generation systems and transmission lines that are prone to failure and vulnerable to attacks. Outages increased by 64% over the past 10 years compared to the previous decade. According to the World Economic Forum’s Energy Transition Index, which measures countries on the performance of their energy system, the United States ranked 24th (right behind Croatia).
Emerging loads like electric vehicle charging and energy-intensive industrial processes require a robust electric grid that can move more power over longer distances and provide more reliable service during extreme weather conditions that are only predicted to accelerate. Modeling conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory suggests that the US transmission system will need to double in capacity by 2035.
How do we get there?
The existing grid system has been built around one-way flow from power generation to load. It needs widespread deployment of sensing and control systems for managing two-way flow where power could come from rooftop solar power, a home battery system, or an EV connected to the grid just as easily as from utility-scale power plants. We also need large-scale grid improvements like new high-voltage transmission lines. However, given current regulations, that is not going to happen until the federal government has the ability to approve high-power transmission lines across state boundaries more effectively, which is where NEPA reform comes in.
Despite multiple attempts in the last Congress to pass NEPA-permitting reforms, Congress could not get it over the finish line. Thankfully, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) have reignited efforts to pass reforms. This should be a bipartisan effort that supports the goals of both Democrats who want to build a more sustainable energy grid for the future and Republicans who want to maintain a variety of power sources. We need to make building an electric grid for the 21st century a national priority, and the only way this is going to happen is if Congress passes NEPA reform.
2. Increase Federal R&D to 1960s Levels
Despite an almost 9% increase in federal research and development funding for FY 2023, R&D funding remains well below historic norms. At the height of the Space Race, R&D spending made up almost 12% of the federal budget. Today, it’s about 3.5%.
Scientific and technological innovation are critical to our long-term economic competitiveness, national security, and quality of life. We need to maintain our position as a global leader by advancing the frontiers of science and technology. President Biden should call on Congress to fund federal R&D at 1960s levels and make a clarion call for a new generation of engineers and scientists to solve our biggest problems.
3. Fund CHIPS and Science Act at Authorized Levels
While many were thrilled that the FY 2023 spending bill broadly increased the budgets of science agencies, it fell far short of the targets authorized in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (CHIPS) that Congress had just passed a few months earlier.
To make America the leading innovator and manufacturer of advanced technologies like semiconductors, fusion reactors, and quantum computers, we need to increase the budgets of programs like DARPA, ARPA-E, and ARPA-H. We need to think longer term. The Chinese Communist Party has passed 14 five-year plans. Meanwhile, elected officials in the United States can’t think beyond two-year election cycles. We need a bold decadal view for our science programs, and funding them at the levels authorized in the CHIPS and Science Act through 2032 is a good starting point.
4. High-skill immigration reform
The United States is on the eve of one of the biggest brain drains in decades. The recent wave of tech layoffs is hitting H-1B visa holders especially hard. Of the more than 100,000 layoffs at tech companies so far this year, experts believe that as many as 30,000 of them are H-1B visa holders who are now living in limbo and may have to return to their native country.
High-skilled immigrants’ impact on the US economy is simply too vast to not make reforms. Despite making up only 14% of the population, immigrants hold 30% of U.S. patents and 38% of U.S. Nobel Prizes in science. In addition, more than half of all billion-dollar startups in the U.S. were founded by immigrants.
Through a combination of higher visa thresholds and minimum H-1B salary increases, Congress should be able to find common ground on this issue to protect American workers while attracting the best and the brightest from around the world. If a student comes to the United States and earns a Ph.D. in engineering or a science-related field, we should staple a green card to their diploma.
5. FDA needs to treat aging as a disease
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers aging to be a natural process, making it difficult for many drugs that treat the deterioration of cells to get FDA approval. As a result, the process of developing treatments that could prevent many diseases, including Alzheimer’s, stroke, and cancer is far slower than it should be. Age is widely acknowledged to be the biggest risk factor for many diseases. Too often, medical problems are dismissed as merely a consequence of aging rather than treating the root cause: senescence. This simple change could transform the approval of a number of life-changing drugs.
When the US government commits to something, it is capable of great things. Look at the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Program, or mobilizing for World War II. We need a new innovation mindset. One that is focused on America’s preeminence in science and technology. Elected officials can’t think about the policies that will get them reelected in November. They need to be focused on the policies that will ensure America’s competitiveness for decades to come and these five simple breakthroughs are a starting point.
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture.
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