Abstract: About 121 advanced energy research projects are introduced in ARPA-E’s Fiscal Year 2010 Annual Report. All these projects, which cover many areas in energy industry with a total of $365.4 million, are for accelerating the development of transformational energy technologies. These ARPA-E funded projects are full of risk in investment but will benefit the U.S. greatly if some of them would be successful. They will keep the U.S. in technological lead in the world. The backgrounds, selection criterions, risk control and administration of the projects were described. Some reference meanings for China’s science and technology administration in energy industry were pointed out.

Key words: energy research project, risk control, Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy, USA