Administration officials will head to Capitol Hill this week to defend President Obama's request to dramatically boost clean energy spending in his fiscal 2013 budget request for the Department of Energy while giving less attention to traditional fossil fuel programs -- a move that has not received a warm reception from House Republicans who will lead the questioning.

The House panel that will write DOE's fiscal 2013 spending bill later this year will spend much of tomorrow morning questioning three top officials who oversee the department's renewable and efficiency, reliability and fossil fuels offices. It will be the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee's latest in a series of hearings as it prepares to write the bill.

Subcommittee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) said last week that he hoped to have his panel's work done "earlier than a lot of appropriations bills," but noted that he was still waiting to receive guidance on spending levels. Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget that was introduced last week would slash spending on clean energy programs and other administration priorities, but it has not been translated into spending levels for the various Appropriations subcommittees. That will not happen until after the House passes a budget resolution, expected later this week (see related story).

Frelinghuysen said his top priority for DOE's budget would be to ensure its responsibilities related to nuclear weapons capabilities are maintained.

The president's largely symbolic budget requests a 3.2 percent increase to DOE's overall budget, to $27.2 billion, with even larger proportional increases aimed at clean energy and efficiency programs within the department, which are balanced with cuts from fossil fuel programs, among other areas.

Tomorrow's hearing will feature testimony from Henry Kelly, acting assistant secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE); Patricia Hoffman, assistant secretary of the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability; and Charles McConnell, acting assistant secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy.

All three offices see a funding boost in the president's request, although EERE is by far the biggest winner. Its budget would receive a 29 percent increase, to $2.3 billion, while the fossil office would grow 15 percent, to $651 million, and the reliability office gets just a 3 percent boost, to $143 million.

The budget request also proposes eliminating $4 billion worth of preferential tax treatment for the oil and natural gas industry, a gambit that has come in for plenty of criticism from Republicans who say that the tax breaks the president would eliminate apply to plenty of other industries. They argue that "raising taxes" on oil and gas companies would be unwise in an environment of rising gas prices.

The pain consumers are feeling at the pump also will likely receive plenty of attention during tomorrow's hearing, as it did when Energy Secretary Steven Chu appeared before its members last month E&E Daily, Feb. 29).

Schedule: The hearing is Tuesday, March 27, at 10 a.m. in 2362-B Rayburn.

Witnesses: Henry Kelly, acting assistant secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy; Patricia Hoffman, assistant secretary of the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability; and Charles McConnell, acting assistant secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy.