ACEEE (Trombley) - The Department of Energy released their budget request for fiscal year 2011 today. While the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's budget is slated for a slight increase, the Industrial Technologies Program's budget request is the same as 2010's request - $100 million (although the actual 2010 budget as passed by Congress was only $96 million).
We are disappointed that the request is not higher. ACEEE recommends that the ITP budget should be $150 million, closer to the funding a decade ago.
However, we are also surprised (and still disappointed) at how the funds are apportioned. While funding for most cross-cutting research, CHP, and technology deployment is slightly up (from $84 in 2010 to $87 million in 2011), the Industrial Assessment Center program is still being run at the unsustainable level of $4 million, roughly unchanged in the past 5 years (except for a small amount of stimulus funds). The IAC's need closer to $8 million to properly run all 26 centers. For more info on the IAC, see here and here.
More importantly, industry-specific research, once the backbone of ITP, has been cut to almost nothing. ITP currently partners with the top energy-intensive industries, such as forest & paper products, aluminum, steel, metal casting, glass, and chemicals; in 2011 they will only fund projects for the chemicals and cement industries (a new addition to ITP).
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
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