[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
HOUSE BUDGET RESOLUTION TARGETS CLEAN ENERGY
SCIENCE COMMITTEE FAILS TO TAKE UP ENERGY AUTHORIZATION DUE TO
RESISTANCE FROM SEVERAL REPUBLICAN MEMBERS TO DEEP CUTS
IN CELEBRATION OF EARTH DAY, BOB WALKER CRAFTS DRAFT HOUSE
BUDGET RESOLUTION CONTAINING HUGE CUTS FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY,
EFFICIENCY, AND FOSSIL PROGRAMS -- NUCLEAR POWER R&D UNTOUCHED
On Wednesday, the House Science Committee marked up an omnibus
authorization bill that was supposed to contain funding for the
Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. When members
arrived at the markup, they discovered that the energy portion
was missing from the bill. Apparently, Chairman Bob Walker (R-
PA) was unable to satisfy the concerns of several Republican
committee members who had expressed opposition to the proposed
deep cuts to renewable energy and energy efficiency programs.
These members reportedly included Matt Salmon (R-AZ), Zach Wamp
(R-TN), Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), Mark Foley (R-FL) and Vern
Ehlers (R-MI). In an effort to force a vote on the issue,
Democrats offered the President's budget request for the
Department of Energy as an amendment to Walker's bill. This
amendment failed on a party-line vote.
After much criticism from Committee members, Walker announced
that he would have the Energy & Environment Subcommittee do an
authorization bill. But when subcommittee Chair Dana
Rohrabacher (R-CA) attempted to schedule a markup, Walker balked
and insisted that additional hearings be conducted before a bill
could be considered and suggested that the subcommittee have a
bill finished sometime in July, well after the appropriators
have made critical decisions on energy programs and effectively
rendering such an effort irrelevant. Rohrabacher will hold
hearings on the energy budget next Wednesday.
Meanwhile, as Vice-Chair of the House Budget Committee, Walker
has been busy drafting the energy section of the Fiscal Year
1997 Budget Resolution. The Budget resolution outlines
allowable spending on broad program areas, but cannot determine
individual program spending levels. Even so, the resolution
often includes recommendations for the authorizers and
appropriators.
The draft bill, obtained by Public Citizen, cites an overall
goal of terminating the Department of Energy and proposes energy
R&D reductions of $652 million over the next six years, a
decrease of 21% from 1996 levels. Specifically, the bill calls
for phasing out energy efficiency programs, fossil energy R&D
and the clean coal technology program. Other program areas
identified for cuts include renewable energy, global warming
activities, environmental restoration and waste management,
laboratory technology transfer and DOE's "education program."
Fusion energy would be reduced to $225 million annually.
Nuclear fission programs are not mentioned in the document.
The Budget Committee will markup a resolution during the week of
April 29 and floor action is expected the following week.
CONTACT MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE BUDGET COMMITTEE FROM YOUR
STATE/DISTRICT AND URGE THEM TO MODIFY THE RESOLUTION TO INCLUDE
SUPPORT FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY AND EFFICIENCY TECHNOLOGIES AND
CUTS TO NUCLEAR ENERGY R&D.
THE FOLLOWING MEMBERS SIT ON THE BUDGET COMMITTEE:
Robert S. Walker (R-PA)* Martin Olav Sabo (DFL-MN)**
Glen Browder (D-AL) John Shadegg (R-AZ)
Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) Wally Herger (R-CA)
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) George P. Radanovich (R-CA)
Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) Wayne Allard (R-CO)
Christopher Shays (R-CT) Dan Miller (R-FL)
Carrie P. Meek (D-FL) Harry Johnston (D-FL)
Patsy T. Mink (D-HI) Jim Nussle (R-IA)
Jerry F. Costello (D-IL) Sam Brownback (R-KS)
Jim Bunning (R-KY) John W. Olver (D-MA)
Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) Nick Smith (R-MI)
Lynn N. Rivers (D-MI) Mike Parker (R-MS)
Sue Myrick (R-NC) Earl Pomeroy (D-ND)
Charles F. Bass (R-NH) Bob Franks (R-NJ)
Rick A. Lazio (R-NY) Susan Molinari (R-NY)
Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY) David L. Hobson (R-OH)
Martin R. Hoke (R-OH) John R. Kasich (R-OH)
Steve Largent (R-OK) William J. Coyne (D-PA)
Bob Inglis (R-SC) Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)
Charles W. Stenholm (D-TX) Lamar Smith (R-TX)
Bill Orton (D-UT) Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV)
*Chairman **Ranking Democrat
CONGRESSIONAL SWITCHBOARD -- (202)225-3121
Contact Matt Freedman at Public Citizen (202-546-4996) for more
information.
-----------------------------------------------------------
DRAFT BUDGET RESOLUTION SUMMARY
Walker sets up the following six point test for guiding the
funding of energy R&D:
(1) "Federal R&D efforts should be focused on long-term,
non-commercial R&D, with potential for great scientific
discovery and the creation of new knowledge, leaving
economic feasibility and commercialization to the
marketplace."
(2) "Federal funding of R&D on specific processes and
technologies should not be carried out beyond demonstration
of technical feasibility. Significant additional private
investment should be required for economic feasibility,
commercial development and demonstration, and production
and marketing."
(3) "Revolutionary ideas and pioneering capabilities that
make possible the impossible - that which has never been
done before - should be pursued within controlled,
performance-based levels of funding."
(4) "The Federal Government should avoid funding research
in areas that are receiving - or should be reasonably
expected to obtain - funding from the private sector. This
principle applies to evolutionary advances or incremental
improvements."
(5) "Government-owned laboratories should confine their in-
house research to areas in which their technical expertise
and facilities have no peer and should contract out other
research to industry, private research foundations, and
universities."
(6) "All R&D programs should be relevant and tightly
focused to the agency's constitutional mission; those that
are not should be terminated."
As examples of programs that pass this test, Walker cites "the
human genome project, an expanding hydrogen energy basic
research program, and basic energy sciences research. Programs
that fail the test include fossil energy, energy efficiency and
the clean coal technology program. The resolution also states
that "when specifically applied to the Department of Energy,
these guidelines suggest further reductions in programs that, in
turn, make much of the existing bureaucracy unnecessary and
suggest its elimination."
In support of its call for eliminating DOE, the resolution
asserts that the agency was "supposedly created to deal with the
energy crisis that the country experienced in the 1970's with
gasoline lines and natural gas shortages" but that "the 'crisis'
was the direct product of federally imposed wage and price
controls...in other words, the Department of Energy, a
government solution, was created to 'fix' a government-generated
problem. Gasoline lines ended soon after the controls were
dismantled in 1981." Disputing DOE's role in promoting energy
efficiency, the resolution states that "in the 1980's, when the
Reagan administration was 'neglecting' energy conservation,
market-based energy conservation actually worked: As the economy
grew by one-third, energy use stayed flat. Meanwhile the
Department of Energy spent more than $55 billion in constant
dollars for energy research alone".
Selected quotes for program areas [with comments in brackets]
are listed below.
ENERGY SUPPLY R&D [cut by $652 million, or 21%, by 2002]
"This proposal reduces near-term technology subsidies in the
Department of Energy for energy supply research and development
in the areas of solar and renewable energy, global warming,
environmental restoration and waste management, laboratory
technology transfer, and the Department's education program.
The Budget Resolution assumes that the fusion program can be
sustained at a $225 million annual level."
[Other Energy Supply R&D programs not targeted for cuts in the
resolution include: nuclear energy, biological and environmental
research, basic energy sciences and university and science
education. In order to reach the target level for this
category, renewables and environmental restoration programs
would likely be virtually eliminated.]
FOSSIL ENERGY R&D [cut by $416 million, or 95%, by 2002]
"The Department of Energy has spent billions of dollars on
research and development since the oil crises in 1973 triggered
this activity. Returns on this investment have not been cost-
effective, particularly for applied R&D, which industry has
ample incentive to undertake. Some of this activity is simple
corporate welfare for the oil, gas and utility industries. Much
of it duplicates what industry is already doing. As the
Congressional Budget Office notes, some has gone to fund
technologies in which the market has no interest -- for example,
hundreds of millions of dollars invested in coal-powered
magnetohydrodynamics -- without any subsequent interest in the
product the investment produced."
ENERGY EFFICIENCY [cut by $416 million, or 100%, by 2002]
"Energy conservation in the United States has been a clear
success. In the 1980's, for example, the economy grew a third
while energy use remained flat due to market-driven energy
conservation. Government spending on energy conservation, on
the other hand, has been less successful. Business has
incentives to market, and customers to buy, conservation
technologies that work well. DOE is left to fund less reliable
and less promising technologies. According to the Congressional
Budget Office, DOE may:
be crowding out private-sector firms or, alternatively,
conducting R&D that those private sectors are likely to
ignore - a common fate of the technologies generated within
DOE's national laboratories."
"No funding is provided for any new energy efficiency
standards."
[Bob Walker led the charge last year to gut DOE's appliance
efficiency standards program and will likely attempt to force a
rider on the Interior Appropriation bill to prohibit the
issuance of any new standards.]
CLEAN COAL TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM
[cut by $157 million, or terminated, by 2002]
"The Clean Coal Technology Program has been overtaken by changes
in the law and incentives in the marketplace. The program was
created in the mid-1980's to help private industry develop
commercial technologies to burn coal in environmentally sound
ways. Since that time, enactment of the Clean Air Act
Amendments of 1990 and the Energy Policy Act of 1992 have given
utilities and large industrial coal users clear economic motives
for selecting lowest-cost options for reducing emissions from
among current practices and new technologies. Both the
President and the Budget Committee have previously called for
the termination of this program.
[No new projects would be supported by this program and existing
contracts that are in default by private sector partners would
be terminated.]
----------------------------------------------------------------
To receive regular energy policy alerts, summaries and updates
from Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project, send the
following message to listproc@essential.org: SUBSCRIBE CMEP-LIST
[your name - organizational affiliation - home state]
The Critical Mass home page is located at http://www.essential.org/CMEP