Resistance on research
Senators criticize the Trump administration’s proposed energy budget cuts.
Plans by the Trump administration to slash research funding at the Department of Energy are running into resistance in the Senate.
A report from the Senate Appropriations Committee, led by Energy and Water Development Subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., criticizes numerous White House budget cuts as shortsighted and seeks to restore funding for many programs.
Among the programs the Senate committee wants to save is ARPA-E, the advanced energy research division President Donald Trump had proposed eliminating. The Senate report recommended not only maintaining the division, but also increasing its budget 8 percent to $330 million.
“The committee definitively rejects this shortsighted proposal, and instead increases investment in this transformational program,” the report reads.
ARPA-E funds research at institutions around the country, with eight projects underway in Texas. Texas A&M University and Rice University both count projects within their facilities, including research into improving solar panel efficiency and using microorganisms to produce ammonia, a substance critical to agricultural and chemical industries.
ARPA-E was created in 2005 under President George W. Bush as a way to support cutting-edge research that could lead to breakthroughs in energy technology at a time when oil was in short supply and prices were rising. The program aimed to do for energy what DARPA, a research program in the Department of Defense, has done for other technologies, including developing a communications system that became the internet, and a satellite system that locates people and places known as GPS.
ARPA-E has funded research on a wide variety of technologies, from carbon capture to advanced batteries to alternative fuels.
Funding the program has put the Repbublican controlled Senate at odds not only with Trump, but also the House, also controlled by Republicans. The House budget plan would also eliminate ARPA-E.
At a basic level, senators are taking aim at Trump’s plans to shift the Department of Energy away from funding the commercialization of advanced energy technology and toward basic research, leaving commercialization to the private sector.
“The president’s budget request proposes a shift away from later stage research and development activities to refocus the department on an early-stage research and development mission,” the Senate report said. “The committee believes that such an approach will not successfully integrate the results of early stage research and development into the U.S. energy system.”
The Senate is also recommending restoring most of the funding to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, proposing a$1.9 million budget. That represents an 8 percent cut, but is far from the 70 percent reduction recommended by the White House.
Trump also targeted the Office of Fossil Energy, which researches and develops technologies for the oil, gas and coal industries, for a 58 percent budget cut, but the Senate is recommending a 14 percent cut to $571 million.
“The committee definitively rejects this shortsighted proposal.” Senate Appropriations Committee report