After two weeks of prodding on gas prices from lawmakers in the House, Energy Secretary Steven Chu will travel to the other side of the Capitol this week to take questions on the Department of Energy's proposed budget for next fiscal year.

Chu will testify Wednesday before the Senate Appropriations Committee's panel on energy and water funding. The session follows a visit tomorrow to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which is holding a hearing on the loan guarantee program that was thrust into the spotlight after the failure of the DOE-backed solar firm Solyndra LLC (see related story).

So far on his congressional tour in support of the fiscal 2013 proposal, which would raise DOE's budget by 3.2 percent to $27.2 billion, Chu has faced questioning on his willingness to shift funding away from nuclear, coal and hydropower, while directing more toward clean energy.

That pattern of questioning will likely continue. The top Republican on the subcommittee, Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, has started a push to end the production tax credit (PTC) for wind energy, arguing that the industry has grown to the point that it no longer needs subsidies.

"These are not your grandma's windmills," Alexander said last week during an event in Washington, D.C., that was hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation. "We should end wasteful long-term special tax breaks such as those for Big Oil and Big Wind" (E&ENews PM, March 7).

By calling for the repeal of tax breaks used by the oil and gas industry, Alexander is breaking with the oil industry and many of his Republican colleagues and siding with President Obama.

Obama slammed the tax incentives during his weekly address Saturday but made the case for more investments in efficiency.

"The recent spike in gas prices has been another painful reminder of why we have to invest in this technology," he said Friday at a factory in Petersburg, Va., that is making jet engines.

The hearing may also focus on DOE's funding for work on nuclear energy.

Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has criticized some of that work, such as the development of small modular reactors, because the United States still lacks a permanent destination for its nuclear waste.

And last month, she questioned Chu over the decision to assume $44 million of liability for U.S. Enrichment Corp.'s uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio. She and Alexander have negotiated a lifeline for that plant, which claims that it could shut down without loan guarantees and research funding to develop gas centrifuge technology to enrich uranium for nuclear power plants (Greenwire, Feb. 7).

DOE's proposed 2013 budget would include $150 million for the plant, but the company says it will run out of money by the end of this month, six months before the next fiscal year begins.

Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, March 14, at 2:30 p.m in 192 Dirksen.

Witness: Energy Secretary Steven Chu.