GHG Daily
2/22/2016
Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz last week applauded the Obama administration’s commitment to increasing energy innovation funding. “Last week, President Obama released the administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2017, which makes good on the U.S. Mission Innovation commitment with $7.7 billion across 12 agencies for clean energy research and development, including $5.9 billion at the Department of Energy, putting us on pace to double funding by 2020,” Moniz wrote in a Feb. 19 editorial in the Austin American-Statesman.
The Mission Innovation initiative was announced during the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change last December. Under the initiative, 20 countries, including the U.S., pledged to double their investments in clean energy research and development by 2020.
Funding for DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) would more than triple under the proposed fiscal 2017 budget. The program promotes and funds research and development of advanced energy technologies. “Since the program was founded in 2009, almost half of its 141 projects completed received substantial follow-on funding and 30 new companies have formed — a remarkable track record for a high-risk investment portfolio. However, DOE was only able to support less than two percent of the proposals submitted for one of our latest rounds of funding,” Moniz wrote of the program.
