According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, core solar research programs in the U.S. continue to be picked apart by a record level of congressionally directed funding for other marginal projects.
“As the United States reels under skyrocketing fuel prices, and high-tech clean energy industries grow into multi-billion-dollar markets overseas, Congress is responding by slashing funding for research and forcing extensive layoffs at the nation’s renewable energy labs,” said SEIA President Rhone Resch. “This trend must stop, and SEIA will focus our resources to make sure that it does.”
A SEIA review of newly negotiated Energy and Water Development spending bill now set to be adopted by Congress reveals that the size and percentage of these mandated home-district projects will reach a record for FY06, with a total of $14.4 million – 17 percent of the total $84 million solar budget – diverted from critical research.
“After similar intensive earmarking last year, the National Renewable Energy Laboratories in Golden, Colo., were forced to lay off several dozen researchers and stop taking on additional lines of research,” Resch said. “This latest round of diversions will undoubtedly amplify this trend.”
The cuts come just one day after 126 members of Congress, including 22 Republicans, sent a letter to President Bush requesting that he dramatically increase funding for renewable energy research and development (R&D) as the “best means” for ensuring a secure energy future for the nation.
“During the past ten years, research and deployment have brought the cost of solar energy down by 90 percent,” Resch said. “What makes no sense is why Congress has now decided to damage the solar program so severely — just as it begins to offer solutions to our overdependence on natural gas.”
The congressionally directed, home-district projects take a number of forms — from a 1-megawatt project that uses federal funds to duplicate a commercial deployment already underway, to a “demonstration” project of technologies already available for sale nationwide. The common theme among all of the earmarks is that they are marginal applications for future solar customers and the nation, demonstrating already well-developed technologies or funding private corporations outside of the Department of Energy’s process for coordinating and overseeing national solar research.
Resch further noted that these major diversions come at a time when other Western nations are substantially increasing their own commitment to renewable energy R&D.
“In a few years, do we want to be importing solar panels the way we do other fuels?” he asked.
The full list of earmarks follows:
Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst. / Syracuse Univ. ”Green Building” (NY) . 750,000
Crowder College Alternative Renewable Energy Center (MO) . 1,000,000
Univ. of Arkansas Research in Solar Energy Field (AK) 500,000
Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (OR) 1,500,000
Conductive Coating Solar Cell Research Project (MA) . 1,500,000
Ultra Thin Film Photo Voltaic (sic) Charging System (FL) . 1,000,000
Brightfield Solar Energy (MA) . 700,000
National Orange Photovoltaic Demonstration (CA) . 450,000
Sandia National Lab. Development of advanced cells and modules(NM). 1,000,000
Sandia National Lab. Megawatt demonstration concentrating solar project (NM). 3,500,000
UNLV Research Foundation for photonics research, including evaluation of advanced fiber optics for hybrid solar lighting (NV). 2,500,000
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