A doubling of funding for clean energy research is an effort both Republicans and Democrats could get behind, if only the money to do so was available, Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) told Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz Wednesday at a hearing. “Republicans and Democrats agree that government sponsored research has and continues to be important for our continued prosperity and job creation,” Alexander said.
However, the chairman went on, the path the president’s Fiscal Year 2017 budget request takes to reach that goal is not feasible. “The president’s commitment to double federal clean energy research comes at the expense of other resources and agencies, and he proposes to pay for this new mandatory spending, with new tax increases,” Alexander said. “This is not a realistic proposal. The budget writers know this.”
The U.S. committed to doubling clean energy research and developiment during the Paris climate negations in December 2015. A total of 20 countries at that time launched the Mission Innovation initiative, a federal level pledge met by a private sector commitment. Under Breakthrough Energy, led by Bill Gates, a significant group of investors worldwide have committed themselves to increase investment in high-risk innovative clean technologies.
The ideal end game for Mission Innovation and Breakthrough Energy would be an investment pipeline in which the government, through increased R&D funding, develops more groundbreaking technology and private investors in turn then bring those technologies to commercialization.
Clean energy innovation is a great opportunity, but cannot be pursued at the expense of other necessary programs, Alexander said. “The president has underfunded the Army Corps of Engineers by $1.4 billion and the cleanup of former Cold War sites by $674 million. That makes it very difficult to draft an appropriations bill, much less fund the proposed new investments in Mission Innovation.”
Alexander wasn’t without a plan-B, however, albeit one that would be difficult for the administration to swallow. “While I’ve called for doubling our investment in basic research, I’ve also recommended paying for increases like that by ending subsidies for mature technologies like wind and oil and gas subsidies,” Alexander explained. “For example, we could start by eliminating the wind production tax credit in 2016, and putting the $4 billion this subsidy costs taxpayers over 10 years toward doubling energy research.”
The chairman also noted massive subsidies for the oil and gas industries.
“There are certainly different levels of maturity, and the administration is certainly in support of the idea of reducing and eliminating many of the fossil fuel subsidies,” Moniz responded, countering that wind subsidies, however, are still necessary. “The continuing incentive we think is very important. It’s the combination of technology and deployment that right now is helping drive costs down quite dramatically.”
Alexander saw support from the other side of the aisle as Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) also expressed apprehension at the feasibility of doubling clean energy funding. “In view of what the chairman has just said that’s going to be a most difficult task to carry out,” she said. “I believe that if somehow we can get a sufficient increase in our allocation that we should, in fact, make Mission Innovation a priority, but one big obstacle to achieving this is that fact that the administration’s budget request zeros out funding for uranium cleanup which was $675 million in FY17.”
