As we reported yesterday, the Obama Administration is seeking to end the expensive and dangerous MOX plutonium fuel program at South Carolina’s Savannah River Site. That’s the good news from the new federal budget the Administration released yesterday. Here’s the bad news: they’re continuing their silly and counterproductive insistence on an “all of the above” energy strategy. That means, instead of making “hard choices,” in Washington parlance (we’d argue ending support for nuclear and coal are pretty damn easy choices), they’re spreading limited resources across the entire spectrum of energy options in their fear of alienating one sector or another.
Our friends at the Sustainable Energy Coalition have prepared this summary breakdown of where energy funding would go under the proposed new budget (which, it should go without saying, will not simply be accepted as is on Capitol Hill).
The U.S. Department of Energy’s $27.9 billion FY’15 budget request represents a 2.6 percent increase above the FY 2014 enacted level. It includes:
* $2.3 billion for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy:
* $359 million for Vehicle Technologies
* $305 million for Advanced Manufacturing
* $282 million for Solar Energy
* $212 million for Building Technologies
* $253 million for Biomass and Biorefinery Systems R&D
* $115 million for Wind Energy
* $93 million for Hydrogen Technology
* $62 million for Geothermal Technology
* $63 million for Water Power
* $36 million for the Federal Energy Management Program
* $305 million for the Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program
* $63 million for the State Energy Program
* $228 million for the Weatherization Assistance Program
* $123 million for the U.S. Energy Information Administration
* $180 million for the Office of Electricity and Energy Reliability
* $325 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy
* $476 million for the Office of Fossil Energy
* $863 million for the Office of Nuclear Energy
* $1.6 billion for nuclear nonproliferation activities
* $5.1 billion for the Office of Science
* $5.6 billion for Environmental Management
*$8.3 billion for Weapons Activities
For more information visit energy.gov/budget.
Also in the new Obama budget is a proposal to sell off the Tennessee Valley Authority to state and local governments. It is expected to be opposed by most TVA-area members of Congress, who love that federal money coming in, and especially love that taxpayers are forced to take on the risk of TVA’s projects–especially the riskiest of all, their nuclear reactors. We’d be interested to hear your take of the proposal in the comments section. Just click above on “Leave a reply.”
Michael Mariotte
Comments are welcome! Say your piece above. Start a discussion. Don’t be shy; this blog is for you.
If you like GreenWorld, you can help us reach more people. Just use the icons below to “like” our posts and to share them on the various social networking sites you use. And if you don’t like GreenWorld, please let us know that too. Send an e-mail with your comments/complaints/compliments to nirs@nirs.org. Thank you!
Note: If you’d like to receive GreenWorld via e-mail daily, send your name and e-mail address to nirs@nirs.org and we’ll send you an invitation. Note that the invitation will come from a GreenWorld@wordpress.com address and not a nirs.org address, so watch for it.
“*$8.3 billion for Weapons Activities” —–???? Could someone please explain to me what this got to do in there?
The Department of Energy is in charge of manufacturing and storing nuclear weapons and cleaning up the mess caused by production of nuclear weapons–it is the department’s largest responsibility–in dollar terms bigger than its actual energy programs.