EERE Funding Up 3% to $2.24 Billion for Fiscal Year 2010
President Obama approved fiscal year (FY) 2010 appropriations for DOE on October 28, including $2.24 billion for the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). The funds represent a modest 3% increase in funding for EERE, which received $2.18 billion in annual appropriations in FY 2009 (not counting special one-time appropriations under the Recovery Act).
The funding is about 3% lower than DOE requested, and Congress earmarked more than $292 million in EERE funds for congressionally directed projects, effectively lowering EERE’s budget to $1.95 billion. See the full history, texts, and related documents on the appropriations act, H.R. 3183, on the Library of Congress’ Thomas Web site, as well as the White House press release on the act’s approval.
Among the big winners under the new budget is EERE’s Building Technologies Program, which received $200 million in FY 2010 funding, a 43% increase from the $140 million received in FY 2009. The Federal Energy Management Program, a much smaller program aimed at energy use at federal facilities, is receiving $32 million, a 45% gain. Among renewable energy technologies, wind energy is funded at $80 million for FY 2010, another 45% gain. The Solar Energy Technologies Program also fared well, with a 29% increase in funding to $225 million. Other programs received more modest funding increases. The appropriations also include $63 million for facility and infrastructure upgrades at DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
See pages 102-112 and 143 (PDF pages 106-116 and 147) of the final version of the appropriations bill (PDF 4.1 MB), and for comparison, see the final page of EERE’s "Fiscal Year 2010 Budget-in-Brief" (PDF 504 KB).
The appropriation act also includes $125 million for R&D in smart grid, energy storage, and clean energy transmission and reliability. It also provides $43 million for the Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee Program, an amount expected to be repaid with loan fees, and $20 million for the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program.
The Act also extends the latter loan program to include manufacturing of vehicles that carry at least two adult passengers and achieve the equivalent of 75 miles per gallon. That will allow loans to go toward the manufacture of vehicles that might not otherwise qualify as light-duty vehicles, including three-wheeled vehicles. The Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program was established by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA). See pages 21-22, 31, and 143 (PDF pages 25-26, 35, and 147) of the appropriations bill (PDF 4.1 MB) and pages 23-25 of the EISA (PDF 821 KB).
Congress also appropriated $40 million for the Rural Energy for America Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). That’s up from only $5 million in FY 2009 but less than the $68 million the USDA requested. The 2008 Farm Bill provides $60 million in mandatory funding for the program in FY 2010, bringing the total to $100 million. That’s expected to support about $50 million in grants and about $350 million in loan guarantees for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects at farms, ranches, and rural small businesses. President Obama approved the USDA appropriations on October 21.
See the full history, texts, and related documents on the appropriations act, H.R. 2997, on the Thomas Web site; the White House press release on the act’s approval; page 79 of the appropriations bill (PDF 317 KB); and for comparison, pages 8 and 56 of the USDA budget summary for FY 2010 (PDF 1.5 MB).
DOE Awards $338 Million to Speed Geothermal Development
DOE announced on October 29 it will award $338 million in ARRA funds for exploration and development of new geothermal fields and for research into advanced geothermal technologies.
The grants will support 123 projects in 39 states; recipients include private industry, academic institutions, tribal entities, local governments, and DOE national laboratories. The grants will be matched with an additional $353 million in private and non-federal cost-share funds.
Of the 123 projects, 24 will employ innovative exploration and drilling technologies and 3 will involve geothermal data development, collection, and maintenance to build a national geothermal resource database. 37 projects will support deployment of ground source heat pumps across the country, including creative financing approaches.
The remaining grants will go toward producing power and heat from new geothermal resources, including deep hot rock and low-temperature resources. Three projects will demonstrate enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), which involve finding deep hot rock resources, drilling into them, developing a geothermal reservoir by injecting high-pressure water into the rock, and then drilling a separate well to extract the hot water and convert it into electricity. Another 45 projects will develop technologies needed for EGS projects.
11 projects will develop low-temperature geothermal resources. Two projects will address producing power from the hot water produced by oil and gas wells, two will use low-temperature technologies to produce more power from existing geothermal power plants, and five will use low-temperature geothermal resources for power production and for heating.
The final project will investigate power production from geopressured brines, hot salty fluids under high pressure that often contain a large amount of dissolved natural gas. In the United States, geopressured brines are found along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast, and the new project will demonstrate the feasibility of a geopressured plant in the southwestern corner of Louisiana. See the DOE press release, the project list (PDF 163 KB), and DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Program Web site.
DOE Awards $155 Million to 41 Industrial Energy Efficiency Projects
DOE announced a $155 million award from ARRA funds to 41 industrial energy efficiency projects across the country.
The nine largest projects, totaling $150 million and leveraged with $634 million in private industry support, will promote the use of combined heat and power, district energy systems, waste energy recovery systems, and energy efficiency initiatives in hospitals, utilities, and industrial sites.
For example, ArcelorMittal USA will use waste gas from a blast furnace at its steel mill in East Chicago, Indiana, to power a boiler that will produce electricity and steam for on-site use. The plant currently wastes 46 billion cubic feet of blast furnace gas per year. Overall, these industrial efficiency projects will result in nearly 14 trillion Btu in estimated energy savings, which is equivalent to more than 112 million gallons of gasoline per year.
32 awards will provide local technical support for the industrial sector through 15 university-based Industrial Assessment Centers, 11 state agencies, 5 regional partnerships, and a national technical assistance provider. These 32 projects are an extension of DOE’s successful "Save Energy Now" initiative, which provides plant energy assessments and technical assistance to energy-intensive industrial facilities. Since the program’s inception in 2006, more than 2,300 assessments have been completed. See the DOE press release, the list of recipients (PDF 33 KB), and DOE’s Industrial Technologies Program Web site.
DOE Awards $5.5 Million for Automotive X Prize Competition
DOE is providing $5.5 million in ARRA funds to support the X Prize Foundation’s work to inspire a new generation of energy efficient vehicles. As part of the Automotive X Prize competition, teams are designing innovative, commercially-viable, high-efficiency vehicles.
Building on a partnership with the X Prize Foundation that began in 2008, the DOE funding will provide technical assistance and expand national education and outreach efforts for the competition. The award also supports President Obama’s Strategy for American Innovation, which calls on federal agencies to increase their use of prizes as a tool for promoting technological advances.
The Automotive X Prize is a private, independent, technology-neutral competition developed by the X Prize Foundation, which creates and manages prizes that drive innovators to solve challenges facing the world. The competition offers a $10 million prize purse for clean, production-capable vehicles that achieve the energy equivalent of 100 miles per gallon of gasoline.
DOE will provide technical expertise to ensure that each of the competition designs is reviewed correctly and consistently. Funding will also support expanded outreach and education efforts that will focus on promoting public awareness of the science and engineering behind energy-efficient vehicle designs. See the DOE press release and the Automotive X Prize Web site.
Treasury Department Allocates $2.2 Billion in Renewable Energy Bonds
The U.S. Department of Treasury announced on October 27 a new allocation of Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) totaling $2.2 billion for 805 recipients across the country.
The energy bonds are designed to help government agencies, public power providers, and cooperative electric companies obtain low-cost financing for clean energy development projects. Drawing in part upon ARRA funds, the bonds function as "tax credit" bonds – bondholders receive a federal tax credit in lieu of a portion of the interest on the bond. That keeps interest payments low for the project owner.
For this round of CREBs, federal tax credits will cover 70% of a bond’s interest. Because the Treasury Dept. has a limit on the tax credits it can provide to such CREBs, it must allocate bonds in advance.
For the current round of CREB allocations, eligible agencies and organizations had to apply to the Treasury Department by August 4. Overall, amounts and recipients selected included: $609 million to be issued by power co-ops in 17 states, topped by Alaska with a total of $124 million for wind power projects; $800 million for governmental entities in 17 states, headed by California governments authorized to allocate $640 million in bonds for a variety of solar and hydroelectric projects; and $800 million for public power providers in six states, led by Washington state utilities, which can issue almost $500 million in bonds for various wind and hydropower projects. See the Treasury Department press release and the complete list of allocations (PDF 1.21 MB).
9 Federal Agencies Expedite Transmission Lines on Federal Lands
DOE and eight other federal departments and agencies announced on October 23 that they signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to speed construction of electric transmission lines on federal lands.
The goal of the agreement is to expedite the approval of new transmission lines, which are vital to modernizing the grid and increasing access to renewable energy. President Obama noted the MOU "will help break down the bureaucratic barriers that currently make it slow and costly to build new transmission lines on federal lands."
In addition to DOE, the MOU was signed by the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, and Interior; the EPA; the White House Council on Environmental Quality; the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
The MOU will cut the approval time for obtaining federal permits by designating a single point-of-contact for all federal authorizations, establishing clear timelines for agency review, facilitating coordination and unified environmental documentation among all agencies involved in siting and permitting, and establishing a single consolidated environmental review and administrative record.
As a result of the new process, applicants will go to a single lead agency that will coordinate all permits and approvals. However, the MOU does not alter the authority of any participating agencies, and all existing environmental reviews and safeguards are fully maintained. See the Interior press release and the MOU (PDF 147 KB).
AEP, Alstrom to Trap Carbon Emissions from Coal Plant
Efforts are underway to reduce or eliminate carbon emissions from coal plants using carbon capture and storage (CCS). The latest project to advance the technology was commissioned in late October at the Mountaineer Plant in West Virginia, owned by American Electric Power (AEP). Touted as the world’s first facility to both capture and store carbon dioxide, the Mountaineer CCS demonstration project diverts a portion of the plant’s exhaust through a device from Alstrom that chills the gas and combines it with an ammonium carbonate solution.
The carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ammonium carbonate solution, creating ammonium bicarbonate, which is then pressurized and heated separately to generate a pure stream of carbon dioxide. That carbon dioxide is compressed and stored for later injection into geologic formations located 1.5 miles below ground.
Although the demonstration project will provide essential information on the feasibility of CCS technology, it’s important to note that the treated gas represents only 20 megawatts of output from the 1,300-megawatt coal plant. AEP has applied for stimulus funding to expand the Alstrom device to handle 235 MW of exhaust from the plant, but even that would represent only 18% of the plant’s output. The larger facility will require deep geologic injection of about 1.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. See the AEP press release.
CCS technology may also be applied to industrial facilities, like refineries and cement plants. To help move the technology ahead, DOE awarded $21.6 million in funds from the ARRA in early October to 12 CCS projects. The projects will demonstrate a variety of carbon capture technologies for power plants, refineries, paper plants, cement plants, and other industrial sources. Together, the projects represent a variety of geologic formations in diverse parts of the US. DOE plans to invest a total of $1.4 billion in Recovery Act funds to spur progress on CCS technology. See the DOE press release.
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EREE Network News is a weekly publication of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
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