What better endorsement on one’s thoughts than that from the President of United States of America! Obama announced his 2012 budget last week, close on the heels of my post on Small Modular Reactors (SMR) and he allocated $853 million dollars for research on SMR in 2012. I always knew Obama is smart enough to know where to get his energy information from:)
More on his budget today, for this is not your average-Joe government budgets but one that signals a clear move towards a clean energy revolution in the United States. The administration has sanctioned about $29.5 billion for 2012 for the Department of Energy, an increase in spending of about 4.2% in a climate where spending on defense has been slashed! About $8 billion of it has been siphoned to clean energy research, specifically wind, solar and advanced batteries. This is in addition to the $36 billion that the White House has asked in loan guarantees for the construction of new Nuclear plants in the US. Nuclear seems to be surely ensconced in this administration’s energy plans much as hydrogen energy was President Bush’s blue eyed boy! Now some people might give me credit for that, for I firmly endorsed Nuclear in all my posts. You know I am not one for taking credits:)
Oh, hydrogen energy! How often do you see a technology go through the cycle of boom and bust in terms of government support, within a decade! From being touted as the next big thing in energy under Bush to being completely stripped of all federal funding under Obama, this technology has seen a lot. I still feel eliminating all funding for hydrogen is a bit harsh. The viability of our fuel cell technologies depend to some extent on such government research funding for hydrogen. That is a topic for another day!
There are other positive tidbits from the budget, like increasing the budget of the government’s venture arm, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA_E) to $550 million after the excellent work it has done to promote energy entrepreneurship last year. The budget also proposed 3 more Energy Innovation Hubs to solve challenging problems in this area. There is also a proposal to spend $588 million on vehicle technology and a $453 million budget for Carbon Capture and Sequestration projects. The latter proposal has brought a cheer to yours truly, an erstwhile researcher in the field of CCS:)
Finally, let’s discuss the most interesting point of the budget. Obama’s budget seeks to eliminate $3.6 billion in annual subsidies to the oil, gas and coal sectors, totaling to about $46.2 billion in a decade. This is a VERY interesting decision! For long, and especially for people in the renewable energy space, we have heard arguments from the oil, gas and coal lobbies, let’s collectively call them black energy, that renewables are not affordable and the price parity with of green energy and black energy shall never be reached. These aficionados of black energy would conveniently keep mum about the invisible subsidies provided to them by all governments around the world and cry foul whenever a subsidy is announced for green energy. We will be close to talking on a level-playing field with this proposal, by every sense of the word.
The reality is that this budget is too polarized and looks to break too many bastions to even pass the legislative process in the US. The firmly entrenched black energy lobby groups are already out to nip these budget proposals in the bud. Still, the “green” among us can bask in the realization that the most powerful man on earth, as of now, has his priorities right. However fleeting this realization will end up being, it is comforting to see that Obama has followed his talk, of producing 80% electricity here from renewable sources, with matching proposals. Only if Washington, DC could agree!
On a separate note, there is a personal goal for me here. Now that I have Obama in my list of blog followers, I will look to proselytize more world leaders, one at a time. That’s one goal worth striving for and all of you will make this happen:)
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