The emerging role of public-private partnerships in fusion energy R&D

Fusion energy remains a promising solution as one component of a decarbonized energy market. The past five years have seen a significant evolution in fusion energy research and development. For example, using inertial confinement implosions, 1.3 MJ of fusion energy was produced at the National Ignition Facility with conditions approaching ignition. 59 MJ of fusion energy was produced using magnetically confined plasmas at the Joint European Torus hosted in the UK. Large bore high temperature superconductor magnets have been developed by private companies, achieving on-coil magnetic field strengths of 20 Tesla. In parallel, there has been a rapid growth of investment-backed private fusion companies, enabled by the decades of research in the federal program. Cumulatively these companies have raised over $5B of capital with an average annual spending that now surpasses that of the federal U.S. fusion program. Stimulated by these developments, new public-private partnership programs have been initiated, with support at all levels from the research community up to the White House, so that private industry can more directly engage with the expertise and resources located at national labs and universities. Such programs provide a means to exploit the strengths of both public and private sectors: the expertise and infrastructure to support foundational R&D in the government program, and the ability to move fast and take bigger risks in the private industry as they push aggressively to commercialize fusion energy in time to decarbonize the planet by 2050. In this talk I will describe a variety of these public-private partnership activities, which are based off similar existing cost-share-based programs in other fields. I will also highlight the critical importance of nurturing and growing a diverse, equitable, and inclusive multi-disciplinary workforce that will be required to support the rapidly growing fusion ecosystem.