Earlier, I guessed that Bush’s "Advanced Energy Initiative" amounted to a promise of $264 million in new money to EERE. Mike Millikin at GreenCarCongress seems to think it’s more — specifically, $996 million. Since he’s smarter than me, I suppose I’ll accept his breakdown of the funding, though he doesn’t say where he got it:
Funding proposals to support the Advanced Energy Initiative in the President’s 2007 Budget will include:
- $150 million — a $59-million increase (65%) over FY06 — for the Biorefinery Initiative, the purpose of which is to help develop bio-based transportation fuels from agricultural waste products, such as wood chips, stalks, or switch grass.
- $30 million — an increase of $6.7 million (29%) over FY06 — to speed up battery development for hybrids and plug-in hybrids.
- $289 million — an increase of $53 million (22%) over FY06 — to accelerate the development of hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen-powered cars.
- $281 million for the development of clean coal technologies. The President had committed $2 billion over 10 years to speed up research in the use of clean coal for power generation. The 2007 Budget request will nearly complete that $2-billion promise 4 years ahead of schedule, according to the White House.
- $54 million for the FutureGen initiative — a public-private partnership to develop an emissions-free coal plant. (Earlier post.)
- $148 million for a new Solar America Initiative — an increase of $65 million (78%) over FY06 — to accelerate the development of solar photovoltaic cells.
- $44 million for wind energy research — a $5-million increase (13%) over FY06 levels.
If you add the $281 million for "clean coal" and the $54 million for FutureGen you get $335 million. In other words, by far the biggest recipient of Bush’s "alternative energy" money is coal. I’m sure I don’t need to point out that coal does not replace oil. So there goes 28% of the "solution." Solar and wind won’t replace oil either — not unless that plug-in and hydrogen-car research produces some electric cars mighty quick — so altogether 47% of Bush’s response to oil addiction is totally irrelevant.
Some alternative.
(For curiosity’s sake, I’ve appended a table showing the current priorities of EERE. )
