The president's budget proposal is available from
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006 - the
Energy Department has to cut spending by almost 2%, not including inflation losses: from $24.6 billion to $24.2 billion. Science and Energy Resources budget areas have been cut 3.4%, from $6.4 billion to $6.2 billion...
The bulk of the DOE's budget is in nuclear weapons-related areas: the National Nuclear Security Administration, and the associated environmental cleanup. Compensating for the almost $1/2 billion added to the NNSA is a $700 million cut in the environmental allocation. Neither of them is particularly relevant to real energy alternatives.
Specific measures mentioned in the budget document include the following 2006 amounts:
- $651 million for Yucca Mountain
- $286 million for a Coal Research Initiative ("clean coal")
- $260 million for the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative ("Freedom car" etc.)
- $230 million in "Weatherization Assistance" - help on heating bills for the poor.
- $96 million for electric grid modernization
- $86 million for the Energy Information Administration
- $56 million for a Nuclear Power 2010 initiative - 7-year effort intended to promote building new power reactors in the US
- $50 million for in-kind contributions to the ITER fusion project
- $45 million for new "Generation-IV" nuclear reactors.
There are also "tax incentives totaling $3.6 billion through 2010 to spur the use of clean, renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies." These are detailed in the Full budget overview under "Tax incentives", and are pretty significant:
- $260 million - Provide tax credit for purchase of certain hybrid and fuel cell vehicles ($447 million in 2007)
- $144 million - Extend the tax credit for producing electricity from wind, biomass, and landfill gas and modify the tax credit for electricity from biomass (expected to increase to $321 million in 2007)
- $109 million - Provide tax credit for combined heat and power property ($84 million in 2007)
- $11 million - Provide tax credit for residential solar energy systems ($19 million in 2007)
The allocation for solar photovoltaics R&D was not apparent, but the overall cut in the energy resources budget likely doesn't bode well.
Overall, it looks pretty good on the tax incentive side, but not so great on the R&D side - why the big pushes for nuclear and hydrogen R&D? Oh well...