USA:

Obama Budget Doubles Down on Clean Energy 
(Washington Wire - Wall Street Journal)

Highlights: Major increases in technology funding for advanced energy- efficient manufacturing (up 150 percent), geothermal energy ($65 million, up 72 percent), and biomass energy (up 58 percent), to complement strong increases seen in recent years in solar and wind energy.

As promised, President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget request shows a clear bet on clean energy and gives a Bronx cheer to the oil and gas industries.

(Courtesy The 
Wall Street Journal)

Granted, with zero chance of becoming legislation, this budget request is more a political document than a fiscal blueprint, but it’s still a useful guide for understanding where the Obama administration’s priorities lie in terms of the country’s energy mix.

For starters, and despite lingering fallout over the bankruptcy of Solyndra LLC, which received federal loan guarantees, the budget resolutely continues to bet on clean-energy technology, from electric cars to geothermal power generation. At the same time, it would end billions of dollars in tax breaks enjoyed by the oil and gas industries, an evergreen proposal by the administration that’s never gone anywhere in Congress.

Interestingly, the budget doubles down on nuclear power, increasing federal loan guarantees by $36 billion to a maximum of $54 billion. (Last week, those nuclear loan guarantees started to pay off.) The budget also provides additional funding for advanced new miniature nuclear reactors.

The proposed budget would increase funding by more than 40% to over $500 million for ARPA-E, the Energy Department’s far-out energy-research arm modeled on the Pentagon’s DARPA. It ramps up funding across the board for research and development in all sorts of renewable energy, from wind and solar to biomass. It nearly doubles the R&D funding, to $588 million, for advanced vehicle technologies—including both better gasoline engines and breakthroughs in vehicle electrification.

At the same time, the budget proposal takes a machete to funding for “clean coal” and carbon-capture technologies meant to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions of fossil-fuel power plants. The $500 million “Clean Coal Initiative” disappears, as do more than $3 billion in related programs that had been funded by the 2009 stimulus.

If that’s not enough to change the country’s energy use, maybe the rest of the budget will help. Treasury will go paperless, saving more than $500 million over five years. NASA will launch some sort of “green initiative,” saving $10 million. HUD will get more efficient lighting, saving $3 million. And the State Department will learn to use photocopiers wisely ($13 million) and finally paint those embassy roofs white ($5 million.)