Abby L. Harvey
GHG Daily
2/10/2016
Fossil energy research and development funding is set at $600 million, 5.1 percent less than last year, in the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2017 budget request rolled out Tuesday. Total requested funds would account for only $360 million of the full funding amount for the program, with the remaining $240 million coming from prior-year funding for carbon capture projects that have not yet reached financial close.
The fossil energy research and development program is tasked with advancing “technologies related to the reliable, efficient, affordable, and environmentally sound use of fossil fuels that are important to our Nation’s security and economic prosperity,” the budget request explains.
The new budget request has been restructured significantly, removing the natural gas and coal categorization and lumping those funds together. “The new budget structure reflects the fact that the CCS and Advanced Power Systems program supports CCS technologies, storage best practices, and innovative power systems integrated with CCS that are applicable to both coal and natural gas generation,” the DOE Budget in Brief says.
Under the request, carbon capture research and development would be funded at $170.4 million, up $39.4 million above the current budget. “It is important to demonstrate that electric generation technology with CCS can be deployed at commercial scale while maintaining reliable, predictable and safe operations. Therefore, the FER&D portfolio includes several major integrated CCS demonstration projects encompassing different technological approaches and applications of CCS,” the request says.
The request would fund three large-scale CCS post-combustion pilot projects; a front-end engineering design (FEED) study and initial construction of a large pilot facility to capture CO2 from a natural gas power system; and a total of four FEED studies for advanced combustion pilot projects “of advanced, second generation, carbon capture technologies that are critical to reducing cost and increasing energy efficiency to make low?carbon fossil energy market competitive,” the budget says.
Carbon storage research funding does not fare as well as carbon capture in the DOE budget request. The department has requested carbon storage funding totaling $91 million, a decrease of $15.1 million from fiscal 2016. “In FY 2017 the Carbon Storage subprogram portfolio priorities are rebalanced, moving from the large-scale injection operations of the Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (RCSP) projects to support for an on- and off-shore site characterization and technology validation efforts; commercial-scale site characterization and Brine Extraction Storage Tests (BEST) field activities; and lower-cost post-injection monitoring technologies at RCSP field sites,” according to the department’s Congressional Budget Justification.
Notably, the department requested a 17.1 percent funding boost for its crosscutting research and analysis efforts. “The increase in the FY 2017 Budget Request will focus on the development of new materials, catalysts, water efficient systems and technologies for power plants, and desalinization technologies for water produced through CCS. FY 2017 funding will also support immersive, interactive visualization technology and data communication optimization methods to improve the design and operation of advanced power systems with CCS,” according to the request.
Request Seeks to Make Good on Paris Pledge
A significant portion of the DOE’s requested fossil energy research and development funding will help support Mission Innovation, a coalition of 20 countries pledging to double clean energy investments in the next five years, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in announcing the budget request. Mission Innovation was launched in December at the 21st Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, during which 195 countries approved the Paris climate agreement.
According to the budget request “the Fossil Energy R&D FY 2017 Budget Request of $600 million includes $564 million for the support of Mission Innovation.”
“There is specifically a 21 percent increase proposed in appropriations for the clean energy mission. I want to emphasize the baseline for this is not the entire energy budget, it is the clean energy R&D budget, so our baseline is $4.8 billion and what’s being proposed here is a 21 percent increase to $5.9 billion. I want to emphasize this increase will include spanning all of the technology space, efficiency, renewables, carbon capture, nuclear, etc.,” Moniz said.
However, the budget now lies in the hands of the Republican-controlled Congress, which has not favored the pledges the administration made in Paris. Regardless, Moniz suggested the benefits of clean energy innovation may in themselves be enough to get the R&D funding increase approved.
“I think the innovation agenda is one that a lot of people can get around and have gotten around in a bipartisan way so look, this is obviously a very large increase being proposed but then again there’s a lot of support so we’ll see how that goes,” the secretary said.
