Martin Schneider
GHG Monitor
3/21/2014
Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for Fossil Energy Chris Smith will appear before House appropriators next week to discuss the FY 2015 budget request. Smith, whose nomination is pending in the Senate, will appear alongside DOE officials in charge of the nuclear, renewable energy and electricity delivery programs at the hearing before the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, which will be held at 9:30 am on Tuesday, March 25.
Smith may face some tough questions from appropriators as the Obama Administration slashed funding for the Department of Energy’s coal research budget in its Fiscal Year 2015 request, proposing $302.4 million for the program, a 23 percent decrease from 2014 enacted levels. Despite the proposal of a new program for natural gas carbon capture and storage demonstration projects, which was listed in the budget along with clean coal programs, every other coal program received cuts—with the budget for Carbon Capture trimmed 16 percent to $77 million and the budget for Carbon Storage cut 26 percent to $80 million. Funding for the Advanced Energy Systems program took the largest hit, with the request proposing a 49 percent decrease in funding to $51 million, followed by the NETL Coal Research and Development program, which was slashed 32 percent to $34 million. Funding for Cross Cutting Research was trimmed 16 percent to $35.3 million.
Overall, the DOE’s budget for Fossil Energy Research and Development was slashed 15 percent to $475.5 million, when accounting for use of prior year balances, down $86.4 million from the FY 2014 enacted level. The only programs that received funding boosts were Natural Gas Technologies, at 70 percent, and Fossil Energy Environmental Restoration, at 34 percent.
