WHITE HOUSE CALLS FOR R&D EMPHASIS IN NEXT BUDGET CYCLE

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
8/2/13

The White House is asking federal agency heads to emphasize science, technology and R&D work in the upcoming Fiscal Year 2015 budget cycle despite what is expected to be a contracted funding pool. In a July 26 memorandum to the heads of executive branch departments and agencies, Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell and John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, underscored what they said is the importance of public funding for basic and applied research and called on leaders to focus on factors like R&D work and technology transfer in their upcoming budget submissions to OMB for Fiscal Year 2015, which begins Oct. 1, 2014. “The FY 2015 budget should continue to build on the President’s plan, by reducing spending on lower-priority programs in order to create room for effective investments in areas critical to economic growth and job creation, including education, innovation and research and development,” the memo states.

Burwell and Holdren told agency heads to focus on R&D work that advances top Administration priorities like clean energy technologies, climate change mitigation and energy efficiency efforts. “In improving the nation’s ability to understand, assess and respond to climate-related risks and opportunities, agencies should prioritize activities that strengthen the scientific basis for decisions about both mitigation of and adaptation to climate change and that enhance utility of data and tools for purposes such as catastrophe risk management in a non-stationary climate,” the memo says. In order to move technologies from the R&D to the commercialization phase, agencies should put in place mechanisms like inducement prizes or incentives for private and academic-sector partnerships, according to the document. Burwell and Holdren said agencies should also identify and pursue “grand challenges,” which they described as “ambitious goals that require advances in science, technology and innovation to achieve and to support high-risk, high-return research.”

OMB Asks for 10 Percent Cut

The White House guidance comes not long after an earlier OMB memo directed agency heads to plan on cutting another 10 percent from their FY 2015 budget requests compared to the levels proposed in this year’s request. Saying she was anticipating “another challenging budget year” Burwell said earlier this summer that agency heads should “look for ways to reduce fragmentation, overlap and duplication, and increase effectiveness” within their individual programmatic offices. The President’s FY 2014 budget proposal, submitted to Congress in April, recommended a slight bump in funding for the Department of Energy overall but requested a 25 percent cut for coal R&D and CCS-related research. The White House also called for a 3.5 percent budget cut for the Environmental Protection Agency compared to FY 2012 levels.