Renewables Gain Slightly With 2009 Bush Budget

A record $3.1 trillion budget was proposed by President Bush today and the Department of Energy's portion included slight increases in several areas of renewable energy funding while completely slashing some programs and snubbing Congress.

As you can see by the chart below, wind, biomass, buildings and vehicle programs all received small increases while geothermal funding was increased by more than 50 percent. Enthusiasm for hydrogen research is fading as the program was cut by nearly a third, and solar programs surprisingly was cut by more than 7 percent despite its becoming a more competitive form of renewable energy.

The knife was taken to the "Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program. I'll let the DOE explain what it is:

"The mission of the Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program is develop, promote, and accelerate the adoption of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and oil displacement technologies and practices by a wide range of stakeholders. These include state and local governments, community agencies, companies, foreign and Native American Governments."

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So state and local governments and small organizations, forget help with energy efficiency. It's a smaller program, but does this send a good message about reducing energy consumption?

The Administration also put a stick in the eye of Congress by cutting funding for all congressionally directed programs. Is this a genuine attack on earmarks and other pet projects?

We also see that natural gas and oil technology programs including exploration were cut completely even though the overall fossil fuel budget rose from $900 million to $1.1 billion.

Finally, while the DOE may not be building a clean coal plant in Illinois, the funding for the technology is actually more than doubling. Smaller plants around the country by private companies will be the future of FutureGen.