Energy Highlights from President Obama’s Budget

February 17th, 2012 |

On Monday, February 13^th, the White House released President Obama’s Fiscal Budget for Year 2013, a lengthy, politically contentious document that reflected many of the president’s State of the Union pledges in January.

Some of the energy-specific recommendations include:

$27.2 billion for the Department of Energy (DOE), a 3.2 percent increase from FY 2012.

$2.34 billion of the total budget is earmarked for energy efficiency and renewable energy activities and projects.

$270 million “has been specifically requested to support biomass and biorefinery systems development.”

$150 million “for research and development of USEC’s American Centrifuge Project, along with additional money for cleanup at the site.”

$770 million for the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, with $65 million of that “funding to aid development of small modular reactors” and $60 million “for nuclear waste research and development related to the recent recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.”

$60 million “has been set aside for research on energy-storage and battery systems” and $10 million for “Advanced Modeling Grid research, which focuses on computational and modeling capabilities in order [to] increase understanding of the transmission grid.”

$12 million “for research into risks associated with hydraulic fracturing ['fracking'], the controversial process used in the booming natural gas industry.”

$310 million for the “SunShot Initiative, designed to make solar electricity cost-competitive with dirtier fossil fuel energy without subsidies by 2020” and $95 million for “wind energy, including offshore wind technologies.”

$222 million for “[the Department of the Interior’s] new Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement” whose activities include “oil spill response planning and safety inspections, and enforcement and investigations to prevent another oil disaster like the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout.”

“Eliminating $40 billion in tax breaks over 10 years for oil-and-gas companies.”

The budget confirmation process is lengthy, and many of the above proposals were attempted — and ultimately rejected — by previous White House budget requests. The next step is for the Budget Committees of both houses of Congress to prepare budget resolutions.