(This analysis is a preview of the
DOE chapter in the forthcoming AAAS Report XXXIII: Research and Development
FY 2009, a comprehensive look at the President's budget for R&D in FY
2009. 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 2009 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 a clear winner in the 2009 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 21 percent from the final 2008 appropriation
to $4.3 billion, the largest percentage increase among the R&D funding agencies,
in an effort to keep the office on track to double its budget between 2006 and
2016 after appropriations setbacks the last two years (see Table
II-11). Most Science programs
would receive substantial increases to hit historic highs, but these gains depend
crucially on the outcomes of 2009 appropriations.
- The total DOE R&D portfolio would soar
8.9 percent or $858 million to $10.5 billion because of the large Science increase,
and smaller increases for DOE’s energy and defense R&D
portfolios.
- DOE’s energy-related
R&D would total $2.4 billion, a slight increase after enormous increases in
2007 and 2008. Investments in renewables such as biomass
and nuclear energy would show strong gains. In fossil fuels, coal R&D would
soar 26 percent to $624 million, including a 25 percent boost to $149 million
for carbon sequestration research and a doubling of funding for the recently restructured
FutureGen project to $156 million. But DOE once again
proposes to eliminate funding for gas and oil technology R&D, and to cancel
$50 million in mandatory funding for a deepwater oil and gas exploration R&D
program.
DOE R&D in the FY 2009 Budget
President
Bush’s American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) and Advanced Energy Initiative
(AEI), both set for their third years in 2009, have made the Department of Energy’s
(DOE) R&D programs a high priority within an increasingly tight domestic budget.
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 is a key Administration and
congressional priority that received enormous increases in 2007 and 2008.
The
total DOE budget would increase by $1.1 billion or 4.7 percent to $25.5 billion
(see Table II-11). The DOE R&D portfolio would
climb $858 million or 8.9 percent to $10.5 billion in the 2009 budget (see Table
II-11), because of a 21 percent increase for R&D in the Science portfolio.
The energy R&D portfolio would gain slightly by 0.5 percent to $2.4 billion
after enormous increases in 2007 and 2008, while DOE’s
defense R&D portfolio would gain 2.9 percent to $3.8 billion.
R&D
in the DOE Office of Science
DOE’s Office of Science 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. The ACI envisions the Science
budget doubling between 2006 and 2016, but so far Science appropriations have
fallen short of that trajectory. In 2007, DOE requested a 14 percent increase
for Science funding, and ended up with 5 percent; in 2008, the request was for
a 16 percent increase, but again the final increase was 5 percent. To catch up
with the ACI’s ten-year funding trajectory, the 2009
increase for the total Office of Science budget would be 19 percent to $4.7 billion,
a $749 million boost. More than 90 percent of the Science budget goes to R&D
activities; Science R&D would gain 21 percent in the FY 2009 budget to $4.3
billion, making DOE Science once again the big winner among the major R&D
funding agencies (see Table II-11). The large proposed increase would mark a departure
from the flat or declining funding trends of recent years (see Figure 1), and
in real terms would bring Science funding to its highest level ever, surpassing
the peak budgets of the early 1990s before the Superconducting Super Collider
was canceled.
Figure 1. (click on the image for
PDF)
Funding for every Science program would increase
substantially, with the largest boosts for programs that faced the most disappointing
outcomes in 2008 appropriations, including a 72 percent increase for fusion research,
a 24 percent boost for basic energy sciences, and a 17 percent increase for high-energy
physics (see Figure 2).
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.
Figure 2. (click on the image for
PDF)
After a significant hit in
2008 that deleted the U.S.
contribution to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project,
fusion research would total $493 million, up $207 million or 72 percent. The entire
increase would go to a $215 million ITER contribution in 2009 on the project now
underway in France,
after appropriators zeroed out U.S.
participation in ITER in 2008 to preserve funding for domestic fusion programs.
The 2008 request would have provided $160 million, and DOE ended up scrounging
for $11 million to keep U.S.
participation alive. Domestic fusion projects in New Jersey,
California, and Massachusetts
would mostly stay even in 2009 after an increase in 2008.
The High-Energy Physics (HEP) program also took
a significant hit in 2008 appropriations, but would rebound in the 2009 budget
with a $805 million request, up $116 million or 16.8
percent. The program does most of its work at three facilities located at two
DOE labs (Fermilab in Illionois
and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California)
and also cooperates in the international Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) in Switzerland,
which transitions from fabrication toward operation this year. In wrapping up
2008 appropriations, Congress slashed funding for early work on the International
Linear Collider (ILC), the next big international high-energy
physics project after the LHC, which resulted in layoffs and furloughs at the
Fermilab in Illinois. From a $60 million request, ILC
work was slashed to $15 million; the 2009 request proposes $67 million. The 2009
request would get these and other HEP efforts back on track, though the lost jobs
may never be recovered. The Nuclear Physics program would also receive a strong
18 percent boost to $510 million in the 2009 request, allowing for a full schedule
of operations at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
(RHIC) in New York.
Basic Energy Sciences (BES) has fared the best
among Science program areas in recent years, although the 2008 appropriation resulted
in the cancellation of several grants competitions. The program would continue
to do well in 2009 with a 23.5 percent increase to $1.6 billion in 2009 (see Figure
2). BES would initiate new Energy Frontier Research Centers, a $100 million competitively
awarded research program on basic research for energy technologies. Construction
funding for the National Synchrotron Light Source II, follow-on construction for
the Advanced Light Source, and the final phases of the Linac Coherent Light Source would keep the program busy with
a full plate of future facilities, even as the Spallation
Neutron Source (SNS) and two other neutron sources, four light sources and five
nanoscale research centers would keep current operations
at a high level.
High-performance computing research in the Advanced
Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program would be in for a 5 percent boost
to $369 million to expand the availability of high-performance computing capacity
that researchers can use for their experiments, primarily at Oak
Ridge and Argonne laboratories.
Biological and Environmental Research (BER) could increase 4 percent in 2009 to
$569 million after a large increase in 2008 to lead DOE’s
charge into bioenergy, genomics, and climate change
modeling, including funding for three bioenergy research
centers in Tennessee, Wisconsin, and California to work on cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels.
After more than a decade of cuts and stagnant
budgets, the DOE Office of Science would climb above Cold War-era funding levels
to an all-time high if the 2009 budget is enacted (see Figure 1). Most Science
programs would reach new highs in the 2009 budget (see Figure 2), but similar
increases proposed in 2007 and 2008 did not make it through the congressional
appropriations process and some program areas suffered steep cuts.
DOE Energy R&D Programs
In the last few years, DOE’s
applied investments in energy R&D have expanded dramatically from roughly
$1.5 billion a year to well over $2 billion (see Figure 1). In 2009, DOE would
sustain enormous 2007 and 2008 increases in energy R&D with a $2.4 billion
request, up $11 million or 0.5 percent.
There would be some reshuffling of renewable
energy R&D priorities, but funding for most areas would remain high compared
to earlier years. Hydrogen technology
R&D would total $146 million in 2009, down sharply from $211 million in 2008.
Biomass R&D would continue its spectacular recent growth with a 14 percent
boost to $225 million, up from $90 million as recently as 2006, while solar energy
R&D spending would be $156 million, down from 2008 but almost double the $82
million as recently as 2006. In a change of priorities, the geothermal R&D
program DOE had proposed for elimination in past years would instead get a boost
in 2009 to $30 million, up 51 percent. But hydropower funding would fall from
$10 million to $3 million, another installment in the annual tug-of-war between
DOE and Congress over its relative importance with Congress reversing previous
attempts to eliminate the program.
Also proposed for a big increase is nuclear
energy R&D, a renewable energy technology funded in a separate account, up
a stunning 43 percent to $630 million in 2009, partially from the transfer in
of programs from other DOE accounts and partially from a dramatic proposed increase
in advanced fuel cycle R&D because of its key role in the Administration’s
signature Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) to promote spent nuclear fuel
recycling. Much of the additional funding for nuclear R&D would focus on technology
development for advanced, proliferation-resistant nuclear fuel, in addition to
the longstanding portfolio of new nuclear reactor designs, fuel fabrication technologies,
and general nuclear energy R&D support.
Funding for other energy programs would increase
more moderately, though at funding levels boosted over the past two years. Wind
energy R&D would receive $53 million, up $3 million, while the former energy
conservation accounts, now split into three, would gain $16 million to $348 million.
Fossil energy R&D would climb in 2009 to
$625 million, up 8.5 percent, but DOE would put all its fossil energy eggs into
the coal basket. Congress fought off similar proposed consolidations in 2007 and
2008. Coal R&D would gain a whopping 26 percent to $624 million. The FutureGen program would see its budget more than double to
$156 million, but this project to develop a near-emission-free, coal-fired electricity
and hydrogen production plant was recently restructured by DOE from a single R&D
facility to multiple commercial-scale demonstrations, a move that was poorly received
in Illinois which had already been selected as the single
site. Funding for the Clean Coal Power Initiative program to develop cleaner coal-based
power plants would also increase from $69 million to $85 million. And carbon sequestration
research, funded in the coal program because the primary goal is to sequester
carbon from coal-fired power plants in geologic formations, would climb 25 percent
to $149 million after similar increases the past two years. But as DOE requested
and Congress rejected for the past three years, the budget would eliminate the
oil R&D and gas R&D programs. 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. DOE would block 2009 funding in order to shift money
to other programs.
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 2.9 percent or $107 million to $3.8 billion in 2009 (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 $6.6 billion in 2009. A little less than
half of this spending goes to R&D activities, for a total of $2.8 billion
(up 1.6 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 $562 million (down 2.2 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 $421 million, down 10 percent
primarily because construction costs would wind down on the National Ignition
Facility in California, the program’s
new flagship science facility.
The
DOE proposal to initiate research on a new generation of nuclear weapons has been
opposed by Congress so far, but DOE would still press on with 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. Congress zeroed out RRW development
funding in 2008, but DOE would request $10 million in 2009, and would spread out
funding in other programs as well.
Impacts
of DOE R&D
DOE
is the dominant sponsor of the physical sciences, funding nearly half of all federal
support (see Figure 3). DOE is by far the largest federal sponsor of physics research,
responsible for 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; 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. 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 but only if the 2009 increases make
it through the appropriations process.
Figure 3. (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 Democratic Congress, DOE R&D programs are well placed to receive large
increases in the 2009 appropriations process, but the ACI increases could be vulnerable
because they represent a large potential source of funds if Congress goes looking
for dollars to shift to other domestic programs. As always, 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 the overall outcome will hinge on whether Congress
will be any more successful than in the past two years in securing more money
overall for domestic appropriations. If not, then as in past years, Congress will
most likely raid the large Science increase to shore up funding for domestic programs
proposed for steep cuts or elimination.
(More materials on R&D in the
FY 2009 budget, historical data and charts, and more information on AAAS Report
XXXIII: Research and Development FY 2009, can be found on the AAAS R&D
Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
-
March 3, 2008
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
