The Current Administration and Its Support of Renewable Power Sources:
President Barack Obama signed an omnibus appropriation act into law on March 11, 2009, providing $1.93 billion for the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) for the fiscal year 2009. This is a 13.5% increase to $1.72 billion in funding for the year 2008. Furthermore, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided a one-time injection of $16.8 billion into the EERE budget. Combining that economic stimulus funding with the regular 2009 budget generates a total budget of $18.73 billion for EERE, 11 times more than the funding renewable power sources from 2008.
Of the $1.93 billion in new funding for EERE, the act provides nearly $169 million for hydrogen technology, including $3 million for fuel processors and $5 million for manufacturing activities; $217 million for biomass energy; $175 million for solar energy, including $30 million for concentrating solar power; $55 million for wind energy; $44 million for geothermal energy; $40 million for “water power,” which includes both conventional hydropower and tidal and marine technologies; $273 million for vehicle technologies, including $25 million for the Clean Cities program; $140 million for building technologies, including $33 million for the Commercial Buildings Initiative and $25 million for solid-state lighting; $90 million for industrial technologies, including $7.5 million for energy-saving technologies for the steel, glass, and metal-casting industries and $25 million to support distributed energy, combined heat and alternative power, and advanced reciprocating engines; and $22 million for the Federal Energy Management Program. Including the separate funding addition from the economic stimulus act, these funding levels are difficult to quantify, but they represent clear funding gains for nearly all of these technology programs, including a doubling in funding for geothermal energy and a four-fold increase in water power funding relative to the year 2008.
Tags: renewable power sources