|
Go to: -Table.
EPAR&D in FY 2008 House Appropriations PDF
version of this document Main
R&D in the FY 2008 Budget Page
Supplemental
Materials: "EPA R&D Falls
Again in 2008 Proposal," AAAS R&D Funding Update on R&D in the
FY 2008 EPA Budget AAAS Analysis
of R&D in the FY 2008 Budget -
| Highlights -
The House would dramatically increase R&D
funding in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by 10.6 percent or $60 million
to $620 million in 2008 instead of a requested cut (see Table).
$50 million of the increase would be new money
for a proposed climate change commission to prioritize climate change adaptation
and mitigation research; much of the new money would be transferred to other federal
agencies. In the regular EPA R&D portfolio, climate change R&D would also
be a priority. -
The total EPA budget would climb 4.7 percent to $8.1 billion in the House plan
instead of a requested cut. EPA R&D in FY 2008 House Appropriations On
June 7, the House Appropriations Committee approved its version of the FY 2008
Interior-Environment appropriations bill (HR 2643) providing funding for the Department
of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and other natural
resources and environment programs. The full House is expected to debate and approve
the bill the week of June 11. The House bill contains nearly $28 billion in 2008 discretionary spending,
$1.2 billion more than the current year but nearly $2 billion more than the President’s
request for a cut in these programs. The
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the primary regulatory agency for the U.S. environment, funds a broad portfolio of R&D
to meet the science and technology needs of its regulatory and enforcement responsibilities.
The FY 2008 House appropriation would boost EPA R&D funding by 10.6 percent
or $60 million to $620 million, but $50 million of the increase would be from
a new commission on climate change (see Table).
There would be enough money left over to give EPA's regular climate change R&D programs a large increase.
The
House EPA appropriation contains a surprising $50 million in new money for climate
change adaptation and mitigation R&D to be distributed in a novel way.
The House appropriation proposes an unusually structured multi-agency commission
to determine federal climate change adaptation and mitigation research priorities,
gives the commission $50 million in a new EPA account to do its work, and then
proposes to allow the commission to distribute funding to multiple federal agencies
(including but not limited to EPA) to fund research aligned with its recommendations.
The House Interior bill would establish a temporary two-year Commission on Climate
Change Mitigation and Adaptation composed of the heads of major federal climate
change research agencies (EPA, but also NASA, NSF, and others) as well as public
members with relevant expertise. Their job would be to review the science issues
related to climate change adaptation and mitigation and to recommend a research
funding agenda. But in a radical departure from most federal commissions which
issue policy or funding recommendations but then must wait (usually for years,
and often in vain) for policymakers to take notice and act on them in the legislative
process, this commission would be given both the money and the authority to implement
immediately its recommendations. Of the $50 million proposed appropriation, $5
million would be for the commission’s work in preparing its report, but $45 million
in 2008 would be available to fund federal agency research programs in climate
change adaptation and mitigation based on the commission’s recommendations, with
the money passed through the Office of the EPA Administrator to the relevant federal
agency sponsors. Although the $50 million appears in the EPA 2008 budget, then,
it is likely that EPA will end up funding only a small part of this research program.
Because this proposed commission is a new idea that has not been authorized or
discussed in congressional hearings, it is unclear what congressional reaction
will be, and it is equally unclear whether the commission idea will survive in
the final EPA appropriation. Other
than this new commission, most of EPA’s R&D is managed by its Office of Research
and Development (ORD), which funds both R&D at EPA laboratories around the
country and external R&D, mostly at universities. Nearly all of EPA’s R&D comes from the Science and Technology
(S&T) budget account, which would total $788 million in the 2008 House appropriation,
up 7.5 percent from the 2007 funding level. R&D makes up most but not all
of the S&T account. Subtracting non-R&D items such as critical infrastructure
protection, operating overhead costs, and clean air standards and certification
activities leaves an R&D portfolio of $542 million from S&T, up 2.6 percent
(see Table). ORD also receives R&D funding from the Superfund program (down
$4 million to $26 million) for hazardous wastes research, and small amounts of
funding from other EPA accounts. (For details of the FY 2008 request for EPA R&D,
see Chapter 12 of AAAS Report
XXXII: R&D FY 2008 or the March
2 AAAS R&D Funding Update on EPA R&D.) Clean
air research would climb in the 2008 House appropriation, by 21 percent or $20
million to $114 million from big boosts in climate change research (see Table).
The House bill urges EPA to invest part of the increase into the ecosystem
and public health impacts of carbon sequestration and another significant portion
to fund research in support of the development of potential greenhouse gas regulations.
The increase would more than double the current EPA investment in global change
research. In other EPA research areas, human health and ecosystems research, the
largest part of the ORD portfolio, would remain even at $229 million, while clean
water research would increase slightly to $110 million. 
Figure
1. (click
on the image for PDF)
Homeland
security related R&D, a growth area in previous years, would fall from $38
million this year down to $31 million. Some of this effort is devoted to protecting
drinking water supplies against terrorist attack through vulnerability assessments
and a laboratory network for surveillance. This portfolio also funds EPA’s National
Homeland Security Research Center (NHSRC) to conduct R&D on a wide variety
of terrorist threats that may have an impact on the natural environment, such
as radiation, drinking water contamination, and the environmental impacts of cleanup
technologies after a terrorist attack. The
total EPA budget would be $8.1 billion in the House plan, a gain of $366 million
or 4.7 percent and nearly $900 million more than the cuts requested by EPA
in February. The House would add funding to the request for all EPA accounts,
particularly State and Tribal Assistance Grants (STAG), which would go from a
$2.7 billion request to a $3.4 billion appropriation and from a cut into an increase.
Environmental
research in general and EPA R&D in particular would rebound in the 2008 House
appropriation from steady cuts in recent years. EPA R&D would rebound after
falling to the lowest funding level in more than two decades in 2007 if the FY
2008 appropriation becomes final. EPA’s R&D support has been declining
steadily for the past few years after steady growth in the late 1990s (see Figure
1). EPA R&D fell in FY 2000, and has eroded in inflation-adjusted dollars
since then except for a one-time boost in FY 2004 for homeland security-related
R&D. The House appropriation would bring EPA R&D back above $600 million
in today’s dollars, but most of the $50 million commission appropriation that
puts EPA over the top would end up flowing out of EPA to other federal agencies.
Outlook
and Next Steps The
full House is expected to debate and approve the Interior-Environment bill within
the next week; although many amendments are expected and several will be approved,
they are unlikely to affect the R&D totals significantly. The Senate Appropriations
Committee is expected to mark up its version of the bill by mid-July. Congress
will try to send a final version of the bill to President Bush before the October
1 start of FY 2008. The President has threatened to veto any 2008 appropriations
bill that exceeds his request, as the House version does by $2 billion, so the
bill may have a long way to go before its funding levels become final. -
June 13, 2007
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
|
