ENERGY POLICY: Advanced DOE research bill headed to Senate floor
Ben Geman, E&E Daily senior reporter
Legislation on the Senate floor this week would create a special Energy Department agency to conduct research into breakthrough energy technologies.
The Senate this week will debate S. 761, the "America COMPETES Act," a broad science research and education bill. A House committee takes up the same concept in a Thursday hearing.
The measure would create an Advanced Research Projects Authority-Energy within DOE. The agency would be tasked with overcoming "long-term and high-risk technological barriers in the development of energy technologies." This includes renewables, fossil energy, nuclear, efficiency and carbon sequestration.
In the House, a Science and Technology Committee panel holds a hearing Thursday on legislation to create a similarly titled Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy. The bill, H.R. 364, is sponsored by committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.).
It aims to reduce foreign energy imports by 20 percent in 10 years. The bill also envisions an elite agency that would promote "revolutionary changes" in critical technologies and turn cutting-edge science and engineering into applied energy technologies.
Gordon's bill describes a "very flat and nimble [agency] to avoid bureaucratic impediments that stifle innovation today." The bill authorizes a projects fund administered by the ARPA-E, which would receive $300 million in its first year and increase yearly, reaching $915 million in 2013. Some of the funds can be recouped based on the profitability and commercial viability of projects the agency funds.
The concept of the advanced research agency is modeled after the military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Other COMPETES Act provisions
The bill on the Senate floor this week authorizes science and education programs at several agencies, including provisions that would nearly double funding for DOE's Office of Science over 10 years.
The bill's sponsors include Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and both parties' top-ranking members on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources and Commerce committees.
It is one of several bills that have been introduced based on reports by the National Academy of Sciences and the Council on Competitiveness. Both cautioned that the United States risks losing its position as a scientific leader as global economic development increases.
The measure, which draws from Senate competitiveness bills introduced in the 109th Congress, is organized around three goals: increasing spending on federal scientific research, improving science education and "developing an innovation infrastructure."
Outside of DOE, the measure would nearly double National Science Foundation funding, reaching $11.2 billion in fiscal 2011. It would also direct the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to increase educational and other outreach efforts to improve public understanding of ocean, atmospheric and coastal science, and it would call on NASA to increase its funding for basic research.
Schedule: The House hearing will be Thursday, April 26, at 2 p.m. in 2318 Rayburn.
Witnesses: Stephen Forrest, vice president for research at the University of Michigan; John Denniston, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; William Bonvillian, director of the Washington Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and others.