Highlights
- The House would appropriate
$8.6 billion for R&D in the
Department of Energy (DOE) next year, a 0.4 percent cut from FY 2005
in contrast to a requested cut of nearly 2.6 percent (see Table).
- The House
would add funds to the request for DOE’s Office of Science (OS). Science R&D would
gain 1.5 percent to $3.4 billion, a dramatic improvement over a
requested cut of 4.5 percent. The House would add funds to all Science
accounts to allow fusion, computing, and energy sciences programs to
receive substantial increases in FY 2006. In fusion, the House would
shift funds away from the international ITER project in order to boost
domestic fusion programs.
- Energy-related R&D would also be a winner with a 5.6 percent
gain to $1.2 billion in the House plan because of increases for Administration
priorities in hydrogen, nuclear energy, fuel cells, and coal R&D.
- DOE’s defense R&D investments would fall 3.7 percent to $4.0 billion,
including steep cuts to advanced scientific computing. The House would
once again eliminate the controversial Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator
program in 2006, in contrast to a DOE request for $4 million, but would
add funds for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program.
DOE R&D in FY 2006 House Appropriations
On May
24, the House of Representatives continued work on FY 2006 appropriations
by debating and approving its version of the FY 2006 Energy and Water
appropriations bill. For the first time, the bill funds all of the Department
of Energy (DOE), while in previous years some DOE programs had been
funded in the Interior bill. The House Energy and Water bill would provide
$8.6 billion for DOE R&D in FY 2006, a slight cut of $38 million
or 0.4 percent below FY 2005 but an improvement over a cut of 2.6 percent
contained in the President’s request (see Table).
The FY
2006 House plan would provide $24.3 billion for DOE’s
total budget, a cut of $101 million or 0.4 percent from this year’s
funding level. More than two-thirds of DOE’s
budget goes to defense programs to maintain the nuclear weapons stockpile
and to clean up past weapons sites. Most DOE program areas would see
cuts in this era of tight budgets, and DOE’s R&D programs would be no exception. DOE’s R&D, split roughly in half between defense and nondefense missions, would total $8.6 billion, also 0.4 percent
below this year’s budget (see Table). (For
details of the President’s request for DOE R&D, please see Chapter
9 of AAAS Report XXX: R&D FY 2006 or the March 1 DOE R&D Funding Update).
R&D in the DOE Office of Science (OS)
The House showed its support for DOE’s Office
of Science (OS) by adding $201 million to the request to bring OS R&D
to $3.4 billion, an increase of 1.5 percent. While this increase
would just barely keep pace with inflation, it would be a big improvement
over a requested cut of 4.5 percent (see Table
and Figure 1). The language accompanying the bill makes no attempt to
hide the House’s disappointment at DOE’s requested
cuts to these programs, and states clearly that the additional OS funds
should address the priorities of high performance computing, additional
operating time at OS user facilities, and domestic fusion research.
In high performance
computing, the House would reverse proposed cuts to the Advanced
Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program and instead provide
a boost of 5.8 percent to $246 million, while expressing disappointment
at DOE’s perennial proposals to cut ASCR funding
after congressional funding boosts. The extra House funds would go especially
to shore up investments in computing hardware and competitive university
research grants.
The House
would strongly support domestic fusion research. Total Fusion funding
would jump 8.1 percent to $296 million, but the House would dramatically
rearrange fusion priorities. In its budget request, DOE proposed
$56 million for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
(ITER) project, up from just $5 million this year. 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; more than a year
after a deadline to pick a site has come and gone, the six partners
are still deadlocked, but the budget request assumed that the project
will proceed in time to require an increased U.S. contribution. But
the House would shift $30 million of the proposed ITER funds and the
$5 million House boost over the total Fusion request to shore up domestic
fusion programs, which would have suffered dramatic cuts in the DOE
request. The House plan would allow domestic fusion programs to operate
at close to this year’s levels. As an extra measure, during floor debate
the full House approved an amendment to the bill that would prohibit
DOE from entering into any agreement on further U.S. contributions to
ITER until at least March 1, 2006, which should further help domestic
fusion programs.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
The House appropriation should also allow OS programs to stabilize
operating times at its user facilities, and the bill specifically instructs
DOE to give high priority to maintaining user access to 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 (see Figure 1) have squeezed
operating time at these facilities, and the FY 2006 request would squeeze even
tighter, with operating times reduced by as much as 61 percent at some OS
facilities. In Basic Energy Sciences (BES), for example, which would rise 6.2
percent to $1.2 billion in the House plan, two-thirds of the $27 million boost
over the request would go to sustaining BES user facilities. Elsewhere in BES,
funding for the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) in Tennessee
would surge $36 million to $149 million as the facility transitions from
construction to operations.
While most of the major OS accounts would see increases in FY 2006 thanks
to the House appropriation, High Energy Physics (HEP) and Biological
and Environmental Research (BER) funding would decline (see Table).
The House would add $22 million to the HEP request to bring funding
to $736 million, just slightly below this year’s funding level but sufficient
to moderate the proposed cuts in HEP user facilities. BER funding would
total $526 million in FY 2006, $70 million more than the request but
still $56 million below this year’s funding level. $35 million of the
add-on would go to fund 53 congressionally earmarked projects, while
the other $35 million would boost funding for medically related biological
research.
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 $3.2
billion since FY 2001, and the House appropriation would enable Science
to just stay ahead of expected inflation.
DOE Energy and Defense R&D Programs
The House would agree to boost funding for energy R&D programs overall
and to shuffle dollars among energy areas to boost Administration priorities
in coal, hydrogen, and nuclear energy. The overall DOE energy R&D
portfolio would climb 5.6 percent to $1.2 billion (see Table).
The top DOE priority in the energy request is $257
million in R&D for a newly organized Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, up from $224 million this year. The nascent
multi-agency initiative builds on existing DOE programs, but also enlists
the Department of Transportation (DOT) for $2 million to make it a $260
million initiative, up 16 percent from 2005. The initiative would tie
together DOE efforts in hydrogen production, fuel cells, nuclear hydrogen,
hydrogen from coal, and basic science to develop practical technologies
for hydrogen-powered cars of the future. Funding would come from the
Energy Conservation, Fossil Energy, Nuclear Energy, and Energy Efficiency
and Renewable Energy programs, and the Office of Science. The House
appropriations for these accounts would allow DOE to fully fund the
initiative request.
Fossil Energy
R&D funding would fall 9.2 percent to $407 million after a similar
cut in 2005. But within the total, coal-related R&D would gain substantially
at the expense of other fossil fuels. Having been rebuffed by Congress
in last year’s proposals to boost funding for the FutureGen
program to $237 million, the FY 2006 request would keep funding for
this initiative to build a near-emission-free, coal-fired electricity
and hydrogen production plant at $18 million; this year, the House would
along with this reduced request. But the House would reverse proposed
DOE eliminations of funding for oil and gas R&D and keep funding
closer to this year’s levels. Energy conservation R&D would also
decline, by 5.8 percent down to $346 million after a similar cut in
2005. Fuel cells R&D and biomass R&D in this account would increase
dramatically, but the House would go along with DOE proposals to make
steep cuts to R&D on conservation in buildings and industry.
In Energy Supply,
Administration and House priorities for hydrogen and nuclear energy
would reshape the portfolio. Nuclear energy R&D would increase 9.1
percent to $93 million. Renewable Energy R&D funding would fall
3.3 percent to $239 million, with increases for hydrogen R&D offset
by cuts in solar, geothermal, hydropower, and biomass R&D.
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
grew substantially in recent years in lockstep with rapid growth in
overall defense spending, from $2.4 billion in FY 2001 to $3.2 billion
in 2003 and 2004, but now these investments are in decline with a cut
in 2005 and a proposed 4.7 percent reduction to $2.9 billion in FY 2006.
The House would reduce this account even further down to $2.8 billion,
8.6 percent below FY 2005. Although the House would reverse a proposed
cut to Inertial Confinement Fusion R&D by providing $541 million
(up 1.0 percent), the House would dramatically cut DOE’s
considerable investments in research computing on the defense side of
the budget to $501 million, 28 percent below this year’s funding level.
The House
would once again eliminate the controversial Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator
program in 2006. Last year, DOE requested funds but Congress provided
no money. DOE tried again in FY 2006 with a request of $4 million, but
once again the House would provide no funding. This Administration proposal
to initiate research on a new generation of
nuclear weapons, including the RNEP and other tactical or ‘low-yield’
nuclear weapons (also called ‘bunker buster’ bombs), has been opposed
by Congress so far because building these weapons would require the
repeal of a U.S. ban on developing new nuclear weapons. Chastened by
congressional rejection, the FY 2006 request plans for RNEP research
only in 2006 and 2007, no funding for ‘advanced concepts’ R&D on
similar weapons, and no current plans for development funding. But the
FY 2006 budget does contain $9 million for R&D on the Reliable Replacement
Warhead, a 5-year, $98 million project initiated by Congress in the
final FY 2005 budget that would explore the possibility of new warhead
designs to use with existing rather than new nuclear weapons. The House
would support this program as the best way to keep U.S.
nuclear weapons reliable in the absence of nuclear testing, and would
boost funding to $25 million in FY 2006.
Next Steps
Now that the
full House has approved the Energy-Water bill, the Senate Appropriations
Committee is expected to draft its version in June.
-
June 3, 2005
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding
Updates on FY 2006 congressional appropriations. The complete series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2006 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the "FY
2006 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
AAAS R&D
Web site: www.aaas.org/spp/rd
