House Democrats today unveiled a nearly $27 billion fiscal 2009 Energy Department spending bill that expands funding for renewable energy and efficiency programs while providing nothing for a major Bush-era nuclear waste reprocessing effort.
The spending plan, part of a massive omnibus federal spending bill released today by the House Appropriations Committee, would boost overall DOE funding by almost $2.48 billion. The House plans to vote on the omnibus measure this week.
The renewables and efficiency funding comes against a backdrop of a larger infusion of cash in the recent economic stimulus package for a range of DOE project spending and loan programs. President Obama and congressional Democrats have made energy-related spending a centerpiece of their economic agenda, arguing that speeding efforts to deploy transmission and renewable energy production projects will help boost jobs while making a down payment on greenhouse gas emissions curbs.
Funding levels and policies include $1.93 billion for renewable energy and efficiency programs, an increase of more than $200 million above the current level. Specific boosts include an increase of $18.8 million for biomass and biorefinery research and development, a $14 million boost combined for wind and solar R&D, a boost of more than $60 million for vehicle technologies, and more than $31 million for building efficiency technologies.
The bill provides $876.3 million for fossil energy research and development programs, an increase of more than $133 million from current levels. Coal programs get an especially large boost -- almost $200 million above current funding -- as policymakers seek to speed up the development of technologies that could trap and sequester greenhouse gas emissions from the carbon-heavy fuel. The bill does not steer money into the troubled FutureGen program, but routes that funding elsewhere. That helps substantially boost a separate program -- the Clean Coal Power Initiative -- by almost $217 million to reach more than $288 million. "Combined with unobligated balances in the CCPI account, and $59,000,000 of unobligated balances from the FutureGen project, there should be over $700,000,000 available for the Round III solicitation," notes report language accompanying the bill.
DOE's science programs would receive $4.77 billion, a boost of almost $755 million above current levels. This includes almost $178 million for climate change research and $15 million to establish the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy within DOE. The stimulus bill contained $400 million for ARPA-E, a program aimed at creating a nimble operation to do cutting-edge research on breakthrough technologies.
The bill removes time limits on loan guarantee authority for low-emissions energy projects. Policymakers have provided DOE with $47 billion worth of loan guarantee authority, which includes $18.5 billion for nuclear projects, $6 billion for coal projects that control carbon emissions, and $18.5 billion for renewable energy, efficiency and transmission. This does not include additional loan guarantee money for renewable energy, transmission and advanced biofuels projects in the stimulus plan, a House Appropriations Committee aide said.
The bill drops funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository by 40 percent, leaving it at $288 million, down from the already low levels of $366 million.
The $288 million figure matches what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said would be available in the Senate version of the omnibus last month (Greenwire, Jan. 29).
The legislation also slashes funds going to the Office of Nuclear Energy, dropping almost $60 million below the Bush administration's request and double that amount below 2008 enacted levels. Most of the loss stems from the fuel cycle research programs, including the mixed-oxide fuel fabrication facilities, which were funded in the Office of Nuclear Energy in 2008 but receive $487 million in the DOE defense portion of this bill, and from the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which received no funding, essentially canceling the initiative by President George W. Bush to accelerate the nuclear waste reprocessing program.
Nuclear waste reprocessing research does get $145 million in the bill as funding for the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative -- a previous program that had been folded into the GNEP concept. Overall, the nuclear energy research program, including the Nuclear Power 2010 and Generation IV programs, aimed at supporting a new wave of nuclear reactors, received a significant $187 million boost in the bill over the Bush administration request, which was already more than $80 million above 2008 levels.
Nuclear weapons, Cold War legacy cleanup and nonproliferation programs all received about equal amounts of funding to those in the 2008 appropriations but were slightly below the Bush administration's requests. The National Nuclear Security Administration would receive $9.1 billion, of which weapons maintenance and research would receive $6.4 billion. The bill does not fund any work on the advanced nuclear warhead known as the "reliable replacement warhead."
Further, the bill would require the Obama administration to determine a strategy for nuclear deterrence, appropriate stockpile size and cost, and the size and nature of a nuclear complex to support that stockpile before any new advanced warheads would be considered, according to the bill's report language.
Defense nuclear nonproliferation programs receive a small increase to $1.5 billion, which includes about a $200 million increase to the Global Threat Reduction Initiative from 2008 levels and the administration's request. The committee also wants a report on progress made on an international fuel bank.
Defense environmental legacy cleanup gets a $350 million increase from the requested amount, up to $5.7 billion. This amount basically matches what was given for legacy cleanup in the economic stimulus bill.
Click here to view the Energy and Water section of the omnibus bill.
Click here to read the Energy and Water report language.
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