(This analysis is a preview of the
DOE chapter in the forthcoming AAAS Report XXXII: Research and Development
FY 2008, a comprehensive look at the President's budget for R&D in FY
2008. This analysis contains revised AAAS estimates of DOE R&D, different
from figures originally presented in the President's budget. More tables and continually
updated supplemental materials on R&D in the FY 2008 budget can be found on
the AAAS R&D Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
Highlights
- The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science would be the clear
winner in the 2008 budget among R&D agencies because of its key role in the
President’s American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI). R&D in DOE Science
would climb 15.4 percent from the final 2007 budget to $4.1 billion, the largest
percentage increase among the R&D funding agencies (see Table
II-11). Science programs would all receive substantial
increases for the second year in a row to hit historic highs.
- The total DOE R&D portfolio would climb 5.7 percent or $502 million
to $9.2 billion because of the large Science increase, partially offset by declining
energy R&D funding and a rebounding defense R&D investment.
- DOE’s energy-related R&D would total $1.4
billion, an 8.9 percent cut from the final 2007 budget because of a surprise last-minute
infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars in 2007. DOE R&D investments in
renewable energy technologies such as hydrogen, biomass, and solar energy would
be up dramatically from the 2006 level in both 2007 and 2008. But DOE once again
proposes to eliminate R&D on gas and oil technologies and some renewables,
and proposes to cancel $50 million in mandatory funding for deepwater oil and
gas exploration R&D.
DOE R&D in the FY 2008 Budget
President
Bush’s American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) and Advanced Energy Initiative
(AEI), both set for their second years in 2008, have made the Department of Energy’s
(DOE) R&D programs a high priority within an increasingly tight domestic budget.
The FY 2008 budget would enable the department to increase its R&D funding
at a time when most other agencies face falling budgets. DOE’s
Office of Science is the largest federal sponsor of physical sciences research
and is thus one of three federal agencies (the other two are the National
Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology
laboratories) that would receive substantial increases to fulfill the ACI’s goal of increasing federal investments in basic physical
sciences research. DOE’s energy R&D portfolio funds
R&D on a variety of topics, including renewable energy R&D on the Administration
priorities of hydrogen, solar power, and biomass, all of which received substantial
increases in 2007. But those increases would be offset by cuts in other energy
R&D programs in the 2008 budget in areas such as energy conservation, fossil
energy R&D, and even some renewables.
The
DOE R&D portfolio would climb $502 million or 5.7 percent to $9.2 billion
in the 2008 budget (see Table II-11), because of a
substantial 15 percent increase for the Science portfolio. The energy R&D
portfolio would fall 8.9 percent to $1.4 billion in 2008 after an enormous increase
in 2007, while DOE’s defense R&D portfolio would
gain 2.6 percent to $3.8 billion after a large cut in 2007.
R&D
in the DOE Office of Science
DOE’s
Office of Science, in its various incarnations over the decades, has long been
the dominant federal sponsor of physical sciences research, especially in physics
and related fields. It is also an important supporter of computer sciences, mathematics,
environmental sciences, materials research, nanotechnology, and engineering; the
Bush Administration’s push to boost physical sciences broadly defined through
large increases in the Science budget would pay off for all research areas. Last
year, DOE requested a 14 percent increase for Science funding, and ended up with
5 percent in the recently finalized 2007 budget. To catch up with the ACI’s
ten-year funding trajectory, the 2008 increase for the total Office of Science
budget would be 16 percent to $4.4 billion, a $601 million increase consistent
with a plan to double the budget between 2006 and 2016. More than 90 percent of
the Science budget goes to R&D activities; Science R&D would gain 15.4
percent in the FY 2008 budget to $4.1 billion, making DOE Science once again the
big winner among the major R&D funding agencies (see Table
II-11). The large proposed increase following 2007’s increase would mark a
departure from the flat or declining funding trends of earlier years (see Figure
1), and in real terms would bring Science funding to its highest level since 1993,
before the Superconducting Super Collider was canceled.
Figure
1. (click on the image for PDF)
Funding for every Science program would increase substantially for the
second year in a row, including a 34 percent increase
for fusion research, a 20 percent boost for basic energy sciences, and a 20 percent
increase for computing research (see Figure 2). (All changes are based on a recently announced
final distribution of 2007 funds among Science programs from the 2007 appropriation
enacted last month.)
Figure
2. (click on the image for PDF)
The Office of Science supports cutting-edge research through a mix of laboratory
research at DOE’s national laboratories, university-based
research, and the construction and operation of large scientific user facilities
that can be used by external researchers for their experiments. Roughly half of
Science R&D funding goes to operate and construct facilities, while the other
half supports research, mostly at DOE laboratories but a large portion at universities.
The laboratory research and large facilities are housed primarily at ten Science
laboratories that are federally owned and contractor operated, such as the Oak
Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, and Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. After several years in which tight budgets
have forced the cancellation of planned facilities, dramatic reductions in facility
operating times, and reductions in external research support, the 2007 increase
and the even larger 2008 requested increase would allow the Office to open new
facilities and begin planning for newer
ones, expand user times at existing facilities, and boost support of external
research.
Basic Energy Sciences (BES) has fared the best among Science
program areas in recent years, and would continue to do well with a 19.9 percent
increase to $1.5 billion in 2008 (see Figure 2). Construction funding for the
Linac Coherent Light Source, the Advanced Light Source,
and planning for the National Synchrotron Light Source II would keep the program
busy with a full plate of future facilities, even as the Spallation
Neutron Source (SNS; due to open this year), four light sources, five nanoscale research centers would keep current operations at
a high level. BES would also fund more basic research on hydrogen, solar, and
biomass topics as a complement to the more applied energy research programs elsewhere
in DOE.
High-performance
computing research in the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program
would be in for a 20 percent boost to $340 million to expand the availability
of high-performance computing capacity that researchers can use for their experiments,
primarily at Oak Ridge and Argonne
laboratories. By 2008, ASCR could be operating two centers with greater than 250
teraflop computing capability, working toward petaflop
capability. Biological and Environmental Research (BER) could climb 10 percent
to $532 million to lead DOE’s charge into bioenergy, genomics,
and climate change modeling.
The
multinational International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) would continue
to expand with full U.S.
participation through the Fusion Energy Sciences program, up 34 percent or
$109 million to $428 million in 2008. The enormous increase would go a long way
toward alleviating congressional concerns that U.S.
participation in ITER, being built in France,
could siphon off resources from domestic fusion research and facilities. ITER
funding climbed from $19 million last year to a possible $60 million in 2007,
and would soar to $160 million next year. The large Fusion increase would enable
ITER funding to climb and still leave enough for a slight increase for domestic
fusion activities in New Jersey,
California, and Massachusetts.
The
High Energy Physics (HEP) program, which funds basic research on the nature of
matter and energy, would get a 4.1 percent increase to $782 million (see Table
II-11). The program does most of its work at three facilities located at two
DOE labs (Fermilab in Illionois
and the Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center
in California) and also cooperates
in the international Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland,
which transitions from fabrication toward operation later this year. Some funding
pressure would be relieved by a planned shift in operating funds for the B-factory
in California from HEP to the BES
program. The increase along with the money freed up from the transfer should allow
the program to sustain facility operating times, to boost research funding, and
to sustain a $60 million research investment in the International Linear Collider,
the next big international high-energy physics project after the LHC. The Nuclear
Physics (NP) program would get an 11.5 percent increase to $471 million. NP seeks
to understand the structure and interactions of subatomic particles, and supports
four user facilities.
After
more than a decade of cuts and stagnant budgets, the DOE Office of Science would
have a second year of growth if the 2008 budget is enacted (see Figure 1). Although
Science funding in real terms would still be below the early 1990s when the now-canceled
SSC project consumed resources, the ACI increases would take funding well above
the roughly $3.4 billion in today’s dollars that the Office has had for most of
this decade. Most Science programs would reach new highs in the 2008 budget (see
Figure 2).
DOE
Energy R&D Programs
Last year, President Bush proposed dramatic funding boosts for selected
alternative energy R&D programs as part of his Advanced Energy Initiative
(ACI) as part of a push to reduce U.S. dependence on Middle East oil. A few weeks ago, Congress unexpectedly
added even more money to energy R&D to bring DOE energy R&D to $1.5 billion
in 2007, a surprising 32 percent boost over the year before. The 2008 request
retreats from the 2007 highs in most areas, and would decline overall by 8.9 percent
from this year, but the $1.4 billion total would still be a significant boost
compared to 2006 or previous years.
Figure
3. (click on the image for PDF)
But the Administration’s energy R&D increases in some areas would
be offset by steep cuts in other energy areas, and would follow the clear priorities
outlined in last year’s budget favoring hydrogen, biomass, and solar R&D
while downgrading geothermal, hydropower, and energy conservation R&D. Within
the fossil fuels portfolio, coal would be a clear priority, while R&D on oil
and gas technologies would be eliminated. Hydrogen technology R&D would total
$213 million in 2008, up 10 percent from 2007 and up dramatically from $153 million
last year (see Figure 3). Biomass R&D would edge down to $179 million, down
$20 million from 2007 but nearly double last year’s funding, while solar energy
R&D spending would be $148 million, nearly double the $82 million in 2006
(see Figure 3). These increases over 2006 would be magnified because the 2006
totals include numerous congressionally earmarked projects; the lack of earmarks
in 2007 and the 2008 request mean that non-earmarked R&D programs in these
areas could see their funding more than double, even quadruple in the case of
biomass, between 2006 and 2008. DOE has been busy in recent weeks announcing several
multimillion dollar awards in solar and biomass R&D; the 2008 request would
allow these multi-year projects to continue and be joined by many other projects.
Also proposed for a big increase is nuclear energy R&D, a renewable
energy technology funded in a separate account, up 13.6 percent to $125 million
in 2008. The nuclear energy R&D is part of large increases for the broader
nuclear energy portfolio combining R&D, facilities, demonstration projects,
and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) to promote spent nuclear fuel
recycling. The total nuclear energy effort (R&D and non-R&D) has increased
dramatically this decade (see Figure 3).
But there would be steep cuts to other renewable energy R&D programs.
As with last year’s request, DOE would eliminate the $23 million geothermal program
and the dwindling $1 million hydropower R&D program; Congress saved these
two programs from elimination in the final 2007 appropriation. Wind energy R&D,
after climbing $10 million to $49 million in 2007, would fall back to nearly the
2006 level with a 2008 request of $40 million.
There would also be cuts in energy conservation and fossil energy R&D
programs, in a repeat of the 2007 request. Congress fought off many of the proposed
cuts in 2007. Fossil energy R&D would fall 27 percent down to $359 million,
the net of increases in the Administration’s longstanding priority area of coal
R&D and steep cuts or proposed eliminations in other fossil fuel programs.
Coal R&D would stay at $427 million after a big increase in 2007, driven in
large part by a doubling of funding for the FutureGen
program ($108 million) to develop a near-emission-free, coal-fired electricity
and hydrogen production plant. Funding for the Clean Coal Power Initiative program
to develop cleaner coal-based power plants would also increase from $60 million
to $73 million. But as DOE requested and Congress rejected for the past two years,
the budget would eliminate the oil R&D and gas R&D programs, and in 2007
DOE has already ended the cooperative fossil energy R&D program. The request
would try again to block $50 million in mandatory funding for an ultra-deepwater
and unconventional natural gas and other petroleum research fund that was created
in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 for a 2007 start. Congress declined to block
2007 funding, so DOE and the consortium selected to manage the effort recently
finalized a 10-year contract for this research effort, paid for out of oil and
gas royalty fees. DOE would block 2008 funding in order to shift money to other
programs.
Although the Energy Conservation portfolio is now part of the Energy Supply
and Conservation program, funding for its component Vehicle Technologies, Building
Technologies and Industrial Technologies would all fall. As shown in Figure 3,
energy conservation has declined every year since 2001 in real terms.
DOE Defense R&D
DOE and its predecessors have long had responsibility
for managing the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, supplying nuclear reactors
to the Navy, and dealing with the environmental consequences of nuclear weapons
work. DOE’s defense R&D to address these responsibilities
would gain 2.6 percent or $96 million to $3.8 billion in 2008 after a cut in 2007
(see Table II-11). The core Weapons Activities program,
which funds science-based alternatives to nuclear testing in order to maintain
the U.S. nuclear
weapons stockpile, would receive $6.5 billion in 2008. A little less than half
of this spending goes to R&D activities, for a total of $2.7 billion (up 2.8
percent). To keep pace with an increasing reliance on complex high-end computing
simulations of nuclear explosions, the Advanced Simulation and Computing program
would receive $586 million (down 5.2 percent). The program, the defense counterpart
to the nondefense ASCR program, mostly takes place in
DOE’s three weapons laboratories (Los Alamos
and Sandia in New Mexico,
Lawrence Livermore in California).
The Inertial Confinement Fusion program, aimed at simulating nuclear weapons fusion
under controlled laboratory conditions, would receive $412 million.
The
DOE proposal to initiate research on a new generation of nuclear weapons has been
opposed by Congress so far, but DOE would move forward on the Reliable Replacement
Warhead (RRW) project to explore new warhead designs for use with existing nuclear
weapons. DOE recently selected Lawrence Livermore to design the RRW, but the project
still faces continuing skepticism in Congress over whether the U.S.
needs new warheads, even for existing weapons. Development of the RRW would receive
$89 million in Weapons Activities in 2008, up from just $28 million this year.
Figure
4. (click on the image for PDF)
Impacts
of DOE R&D
DOE
is the dominant sponsor of the physical sciences, funding more than a third of
all federal support (see Figure 4). DOE is by far the largest federal sponsor
of physics research, responsible for nearly two-thirds of all federal physics
research. DOE’s impact on the physical sciences is magnified
if one also considers facilities; DOE scientific user facilities are heavily used
by the physical sciences and other research communities for experiments, even
for research funded by other agencies. DOE is also a leading sponsor of computer
sciences, mathematics, and engineering research, computer sciences in particular.
But DOE support for
most disciplines has stagnated in recent years because of flat or declining Office
of Science budgets and the lingering impact of post-Cold War cutbacks both on
the defense and nondefense sides of DOE. Physical sciences
support peaked at the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s but has mostly declined
since then (see Figure 5); this decline along with similar trends in other physical
sciences funding agencies is an important backdrop to the ACI and other initiatives
to boost future federal support of the physical sciences. DOE support of other
key disciplines has stagnated in recent years as well: after a long climb in the
1990s as DOE transitioned to computer simulations as an alternative to nuclear
testing, DOE computer sciences support has stagnated this decade; DOE’s
key role in the Human Genome Project led to a sustained boost in life sciences
funding for most of the 1990s but has been declining in recent years; and waning
environmental cleanup needs as well as flat Science budgets have led to a steady
decline in environmental sciences support. Only engineering research has done
well over the past decade, both from reclassifications of development to research
but also increasing engineering work done as part of the energy and defense portfolios.
The ACI’s broad-based increases for Science research
should benefit all of these disciplines, and promise a turnaround in their fortunes
when the 2007 and 2008 are spent.
Figure
5. (click on the image for PDF)
Outlook
for the DOE Budget
Because
the ACI and energy R&D are high priorities both for the Bush Administration
and the new Democratic majority in Congress, DOE R&D programs are well placed
to receive large increases in the 2008 appropriations process, just as they did
in the just-completed 2007 process. As always, even in previous Congresses, congressional
appropriators will tinker with the DOE request and will rearrange the mix of priorities,
especially in the energy area where DOE proposals to eliminate several programs
are likely to run into resistance. But a large increase for DOE Science, if not
15 percent then a smaller but still substantial one, and more money for DOE Energy
than requested are highly likely to emerge in the final 2008 DOE appropriation.
(More materials on R&D in
the FY 2008 budget, historical data and charts, and more information on AAAS
Report XXXII: Research and Development FY 2008, can be found on the AAAS R&D
Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
-
March 13, 2007 REVISED March 21
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200
New York Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D
Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
