The Obama administration offered a budget proposal yesterday that would tighten the purse strings for a nation mired in red, while shoring up climate change and energy efforts for environment, land management and natural resources programs.

President Obama's blueprint for fiscal 2012 offers modest funding levels for many climate and energy initiatives, underscoring this area as an administration priority even during a tough budget year when trade-off decisions were par for the course. For U.S. EPA, Interior and the Agriculture Department, funding levels for climate programs often match those enacted in fiscal 2010 or receive a slight bump, even as cash in other areas is significantly curtailed.

Republicans pounced: "The president's budget appears to be long on rhetoric and lean on spending cuts," said House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) "We must go much further than this anemic effort of symbolic reductions and additional spending proposed under the guise of funding 'freezes' if we are truly to get our nation's finances on a sustainable course," he said, citing Obama's proposal for a $400 million, five-year spending freeze in non-security discretionary spending.

Lawmakers never passed a version of the White House budget for fiscal 2011, which ends Sept. 30, and Congress will be juggling debates about funding levels for the remaining seven months of the fiscal year even as lawmakers begin to scrutinize this fiscal 2012 proposal.

The continuing resolution (CR) proposed by House Republicans would bar U.S. EPA from spending any of its funds on greenhouse gas regulations for the remainder of the fiscal year (ClimateWire, Feb. 14). Responding to that threat yesterday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said, "We want to work with House Republicans to cut spending and cut the deficit, but we want to make sure we don't undermine our ability to protect public health and the environment."

"The longer it takes to make modest steps, the harder it will get," she told reporters.

Holding climate change above the fray

Under the White House budget for fiscal 2012, funding for EPA would be trimmed by roughly $1.3 billion, amounting to a budget of $9 billion. While EPA programs supporting water infrastructure would lose more than $1 billion and the budget for Superfund cleanup took a hit, climate programs remained largely untouched or received cash infusions.

The budget would set aside $46 million for regulatory efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and implement greenhouse gas reporting requirements under the Clean Air Act. That figure would include $25 million for states to implement federal greenhouse gas rules for stationary sources and $5 million to assist such activities at the federal level. It would also set aside $7 million to support the development of New Source Performance Standards for greenhouse gases for oil refineries and utilities in the next couple years.

EPA also expects to tackle other items on its climate agenda, including implementing initial phases of climate regulations on stationary sources and crafting a future phase of its greenhouse gas regulations by July 2012. As part of the $46 million, the agency would also receive support for its plans to issue new regulations to curtail the emissions of certain heavy-duty vehicles by July of this year and of specific model year light-duty trucks next year.

The White House budget would mark a "moderate increase in our climate programs" for fiscal 2012, noted Jackson. "We can't make cuts in a way that will undermine our ability to win the future," she said.

Collision dead ahead

"I think if we are going to seize the moment on clean energy, Obama has made good investments in the future," said Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew Environment Group's clean energy program. "I think the rubber is going to meet the road when the CR and budget collide, since the agenda of the House Republicans looks far different than the agenda of the administration," she said.

Several climate science programs would be bolstered as part of environment and natural resources budgets, with EPA's science and technology office slated to receive $247 million for air and climate programs -- up several million dollars from fiscal 2010.

About $108 million would support a new Air, Climate and Energy (ACE) program designed to integrate and streamline existing research on the effects of climate change on air, water and land use. The research will explore the impact of global climate change on human health and "determine how the use of new and existing biofuels will affect critical ecosystems and human health," the agency said in its budget summary. The range of programs now under the ACE umbrella would receive an additional $3.4 million above the fiscal 2010 funds provided for this type of work.

Another $48 million would be injected into the U.S. Geological Survey pool to take charge of the Landsat satellite program, which collects remote sensing data that could be used for natural resource management and climate research.

Separately, the Interior Department budget would set aside $72.9 million for climate variability science programs, an increase of $9.7 million over the 2010 enacted level. Noah Matson, vice president for climate change at Defenders of Wildlife, said the Interior Department offered some jewels for climate change work, including a $12.8 million increase over fiscal 2010 for the USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center, which would have a total budget of $31 million.

The regional centers under that initiative are charged with looking at how climate change will affect wildlife and ecosystems. "You can't understand how your system is changing until you have that information," he said. The 2012 budget would allow USGS to establish new climate change centers in the Northeast, the south central region and the Pacific islands that could provide scientific information, tools and techniques for land managers to use in their planning.

Interior and Agriculture

Renewable energy initiatives also won cash infusions that would allow for more development of solar, wind and geothermal electricity generation on public lands. The Interior Department aims to permit at least 9,000 megawatts of new renewable energy power on DOI-managed lands by the end of this year, and $73 million provided for reviewing and permitting new renewable energy projects on federal lands is expected to support that initiative.

In 2010, the Interior Department approved a dozen renewable energy projects on public lands, including what will be the largest solar project in the world, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said yesterday. The department aims to triple the capacity of renewable energy projects on public lands by 2012, he said.

Meanwhile, the Agriculture budget was slashed by $3.2 billion, rolling back more than $1 billion in conservation funds and trimming research. Still, the $23.9 billion budget would invest $6.5 billion in renewable and clean energy work. "We want to make sure we don't jeopardize our ability to grow our way out of this deficit by cutting our way out of this deficit," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.

The budget appears to be a mixed bag for conservation programs, which many view as essential to helping mitigate the threats of climate change.

While more than $1 billion would be cut in conservation funds that were allocated under the farm bill, about $900 million would be set aside for land and water conservation activities across the Interior and Agriculture departments' budgets, said David Moulton, climate policy director for the Wilderness Society. Those funds will help connect fragmented lands in the short term and create corridors for wildlife, but in the long term, they will also be valuable for helping deal with climate change, he said.

The Forest Service budget, which stood at $5.3 billion in fiscal 2010, will be trimmed to $5.14 billion under the White House proposal for fiscal 2012. Dave Cleaves, climate change adviser for the Forest Service, said the full impact of those funding levels remains unclear.

"There will be some reduction in our ability to respond to climate change," he said in an interview. "The extent is undetermined at this point, but it's more about the way we use that money even when there is less of it," he said.

Even with the cuts, there will still be boosts to flagship programs geared toward keeping forestlands as forests, he said, previewing budget details that were not yet broken out at the time of this publishing. Overall, he said, "it's a long road between the president's budget request and what gets enacted."

Reporter Tiffany Stecker contributed.