The Department of Energy’s $32.5 billion budget includes President Obama’s theme of favoring renewable energy over fossil fuels such as coal.
The agency’s fiscal 2017 budget request drives up programming funds to reduce the cost of solar and wind energy by 30 percent, while cutting money for coal, oil and natural gas programs by 5 percent, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told reporters Tuesday.
The renewable energy budget request is $621 million, a 30 percent increase over 2016 levels of $478 million.
For example, the Sunshot program, designed to make solar energy competitive with coal, was boosted by $44 million to $285 million, which is almost half of the administration’s total request for coal and fossil energy programs.
Those increases are just for renewables, but the total complement of clean energy technologies and climate change programs under the renewable energy office is up 40 percent to $2.89 billion.
In contrast, the fossil energy programs’ budget was cut 5 percent, from $632 to $600 million. Most of that money will be directed to develop technologies that can capture carbon dioxide from power plants run by fossil fuels and reuse or sell it for some other industrial process.
The program would support the president’s climate change agenda, which looks to reduce carbon emissions to fight global warming. Many scientists blame greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels on driving manmade climate change.
Moniz said although the budget is lower, it includes $8 billion in loan guarantees for advanced fossil energy projects. He added that this year’s request also seeks to develop carbon-capture pilot projects.
The agency’s nuclear energy request fared better than fossil fuels, which saw a 1 percent boost from $986 million in last year’s request, to a level that is a few million dollars shy of the $1 billion mark.
Advanced manufacturing also got a big boost, up 27 percent to $919 million, to support advanced technologies that make manufacturing more efficient and environmentally sustainable.
