Highlights
- The House would give $8.9 billion for R&D in the Department of Energy
in FY 2005, an increase of $141 million or 1.6 percent that would barely
stay ahead of inflation (see Table).
- DOE’s Office of Science would have an R&D budget of $3.3 billion in FY
2005, a boost of 4.4 percent or $141 million in contrast to a requested
cut. The House would add funds for high-performance computing research,
domestic fusion research, increased operating time at user facilities,
and nanoscale science but would refrain from the traditional addition
of earmarked projects.
-
The House would cut DOE’s energy R&D
programs by 8.3 percent to $1.3 billion. The House would add funds to
the defense request for a 2.7 percent increase to $4.4 billion for DOE’s defense-related R&D.
Recently,
the House of Representatives drafted its version of the FY 2005 Energy/Water
appropriations bill (HR 4614), which provides funding for the majority
of Department of Energy (DOE) programs; on June 17, the full House approved
its FY 2005 Interior appropriations bill (HR 4568), which funds the
remainder of DOE. Together, the two bills would provide $8.9
billion for DOE’s R&D programs in FY 2005,
$141 million or 1.6 percent more than FY 2004, an increase just
ahead of the 1.25 percent expected inflation rate
(see Table). Although DOE’s
science and defense-related R&D activities would receive modest
increases in the House plan, DOE’s energy R&D would decline significantly. (For details
of R&D in the FY 2005 request, please see Chapter
9 of AAAS Report XXIX: R&D
FY 2005.)
DOE’s
R&D portfolio would receive a greater percentage increase than the
DOE budget as a whole. The total FY 2005 DOE budget would be $23.9 billion
in the House bills, a small increase of $179 million or 0.8 percent
that would be nearly $1 billion below the Administration request, primarily
because the House would not authorize a $749 million proposal for expanded
Yucca Mountain
activities financed through a new trust fund transfer (see Table).
More than two-thirds of the DOE budget goes to defense-related activities
involving the U.S.
nuclear weapons stockpile and related environmental clean-up costs,
including defense-related R&D to support these activities.
R&D in the DOE Office of Science (OS)
R&D in DOE’s
Office of Science (OS) programs would be a modest winner in the House Energy/Water
bill, with increases going to OS programs rather than congressional
earmarks. Although the Administration proposed declining funding
at $3.2 billion for the fourth year in a row, the House would add $155
million to the request for a total of $3.3 billion in R&D for FY
2005, a 4.4 percent boost compared to last year. More unusually, the
additional funds do not include any congressionally designated projects
(earmarks); because nearly $90 million in FY 2004 R&D earmarks would
not be renewed, the Office of Science would have even more funds to
devote to its R&D programs in FY 2005.
The funding boost
should allow major OS research programs to increase operating time and
user support at scientific user facilities. The Office of Science operates
unique, large-scale research facilities at DOE’s
national laboratories around the country, which external researchers
can use for their own experiments through a competitive proposal process.
In recent years, tight budgets have squeezed operating time at these
facilities. The $20 million increase for High Energy Physics to $753
million and the additional $25 million for Nuclear Physics to $415 million
would primarily go to increasing use of its facilities. Funding for
the largest OS account, Basic Energy Sciences, would increase $68 million
to $1.1 billion, at the same time that construction costs of the Spallation Neutron Source, a new large-scale facility in Tennessee,
would decline. As a result, BES support of research grants and user
time at existing facilities would increase substantially in FY 2005,
especially in the area of nanoscale science.
In addition to
its support of facilities, DOE’s Office of
Science is also the dominant federal supporter of research in the physical
sciences, particularly high-energy physics and nuclear physics. It is
also a leading supporter of biological sciences, environmental sciences,
computing sciences, and fusion research.
The House would provide additional funds to the Fusion Energy Sciences
program to ensure that U.S. participation in an international fusion project will not crowd out domestic
research. The Fusion appropriation of $276 million would be $14
million more than last year and $12 million more than the request. The
additional funds would go to increase user time at domestic fusion experimental
facilities. The House also urges DOE to support additional domestic
fusion research with funds freed up by delays in the International Thermonuclear
Experimental Reactor (ITER). The $5 billion international project has
been delayed because the international partners have been unable to
agree on a site in either Japan
or France.
The largest Office of Science increase would go to Advanced Scientific
Computing Research (ASCR), whose funding
jumps 15.8 percent to $234 million in contrast to a flat request. The
additional funds would help develop hardware, software, and algorithms
necessary for world-leading research supercomputing capabilities. There
has been increasing congressional concern that the U.S.
is losing its lead in high-performance research computing, especially
to Japan.
In recent weeks, the House Science Committee has approved two bills
that would give a higher profile to U.S.
high-performance computing, one bill that would require an ongoing,
coordinated national computing strategy and another that would establish
a specific DOE R&D program to develop more advanced research supercomputing
user facilities.
Figure 1. (click
on the image to view or download a color, full-size PDF version of the
chart)
The Biological and Environmental Research (BER) account would decline 3.0
percent to $572 million in the House bill, but this would translate
to an increase for core programs because of the lack of FY 2005 earmarks.
The BER account is the traditional home of earmarks in the OS account,
totaling $87 million in FY 2004 for R&D earmarks and an additional
$50 million (not shown in the Table) for
a tropical rain forest project in Iowa. The FY 2005 request would delete
all these earmarks and provide flat to slightly increasing funding for
most BER programs for a $502 million total. The $70 million House addition
to the request would be free of earmarks, and should allow BER to increase
funding significantly for its support of research in genomics, medical
applications, biological imaging, climate change science, and environmental
remediation.
After more than a decade of steep cuts and stagnant budgets, the DOE Office
of Science has less money now for its R&D programs than it did in
the early 1990s (see Figure 1). In
today’s dollars, the Science program has been stuck at roughly $3.1
billion since FY 2001, but the FY 2005 House increase, if it prevails
in final appropriations, would represent an increase in inflation-adjusted
terms.
DOE Energy and Defense R&D Programs
The House would cut funding for most of DOE’s
energy-related R&D programs. The overall Solar and Renewables
R&D program would stay at $320 million in FY 2005; the House would
scale back the Administration’s request for hydrogen-related research
and distribute the savings to other renewable energy programs. Nuclear
energy R&D would decline by $7 million to $123 million, but this
would be $26 million more than the request. The House criticizes DOE
for designating the newly consolidated Idaho National Laboratory (INL)
as the home of nuclear energy R&D, but proposing cuts in nuclear
energy R&D there; presumably, most of the added House funds would
go to INL.
The Interior Bill,
approved by the House on June 17, funds several DOE energy programs.
$237 million in funding for Future Gen, an initiative aimed at building
an integrated, near-emission-free electricity and hydrogen production
plant would be deferred until FY 2006. DOE requested the full amount
for FY 2005. Also the House bill would incorporate the FutureGen
program into the Clean Coal Technology program – an overarching initiative
to enable cleaner use of America’s
coal reserves. As much as $18 million of funds previously appropriated
for Clean Coal is to be used for FutureGen
in FY 2005. FutureGen is part of Fossil Energy R&D, which the House
would fund at $405 million for R&D. This would be almost $36 million
under the President’s request and also $60 million or 12.8 percent below
the FY 2004 level. The House would use some of the funds freed up by
the FutureGen deferral to boost funding for other programs. The
separate Clean Coal power initiative would receive $105 million,
more than double the President’s request. Advanced Research would remain almost flat at
$38.3 million, as the House would restore funds to the 20 percent cuts
requested by the President. Distributed generation systems aimed at
fuel cell research would be funded at almost triple the request, resulting
in appropriations of $74.2 million, an increase of 4.2 percent.
Energy Conservation
programs overall would be cut by a significant margin, but mostly because
of the shifting of Weatherization Assistance programs out of DOE. These
programs are designed to help improve energy efficiency of low-income
homes, and are not classified as R&D. Energy Conservation R&D
would decline only slightly by 0.3 percent to $418 million in the House
Interior bill.
DOE has responsibility
for managing and disposing of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel and high-level
radioactive waste, both civilian and military. In past years, Waste
Management R&D represented a small part of the DOE’s
portfolio. However, as the Yucca
Mountain long-term, high-level
nuclear waste repository moves forward after receiving congressional
and White House approvals a year ago, the FY 2005 request would quadruple
the budget for radioactive waste management R&D to $275 million,
funded by the proposed transfer of nuclear power funds out of a trust
fund. Although the House Energy bill expresses support for this increase,
the new transfer authority has not been authorized so the Yucca Mountain-related
R&D appropriation would remain at the current $69 million level.
On the defense
side, most of DOE’s R&D is funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which funds maintenance
of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile through science-based research,
mostly in its core Weapons Activities account. R&D in Weapons Activities
has grown substantially in recent years in lockstep with rapid growth
in overall defense spending, from $2.4 billion in FY 2001 to $3.2 billion
this year, but would slow down to a 1.6 percent increase to $3.2 billion
in the FY 2005 House plan. Within the overall portfolio, Inertial Confinement
Fusion R&D funding would rise 6.0 percent to $545 million, including
$130 million for continued construction of the National Ignition Facility
at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
This year, there
is again considerable controversy over the Bush
Administration’s proposal to initiate research on a new generation of
nuclear weapons, including the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator
(RNEP) project (nicknamed a ‘bunker buster’ bomb) and other tactical
or ‘low-yield’ nuclear weapons. The President requested $28 million
in FY 2005 for continued R&D on the RNEP project and $9 million
for similar concept studies, but the House Energy bill would zero out
funding for both programs. Last year, President Bush signed into law
a defense authorization bill which repealed the longstanding U.S.
prohibition on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons,
thus allowing this research program to take place, but prohibited DOE
from entering the development phase of the RNEP or other tactical nuclear
weapons unless it receives explicit authorization from Congress. The
House bill criticizes DOE for continuing to claim that the RNEP is only
a research program, while at the same time projecting $485 million in
its budget over the next five years, an investment more than sufficient
to move the program well into design and development toward eventual
production.
Next Steps
The full House
will debate and likely approve the Energy-Water bill within the next
few weeks. The House approved its Interior bill on June 17, the first
of the 13 appropriations bills to make it through the House. The Senate
has not drafted its version of either bill, and will not do so until
July at the earliest. Congress is unlikely to send a final version of
either bill to the President before the October 1 start of FY 2005,
although the Interior bill has a better chance of making it through
the process. Both bills may end up as part of a multi-bill omnibus appropriations
package after October 1.
- June 24, 2004
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates
on the FY 2005 congressional appropriations process. This analysis
includes information on R&D in House aappropriations for the Department
of Energy. The complete series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including
continually updated analyses of R&D by agency in FY 2005 appropriations,
is available on the AAAS R&D
Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the "FY
2005 R&D" or the "What's New"
sections.)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
