Environmental▼News
The President’s 2004 Budget resident Bush has requested $122.7 billion for total federal research and development (R&D) projects for fiscal year 2004 (FY ’04), another record figure and 6.7% more than what he sought in FY ’03. Total funding for basic and applied research would increase by only 3.2 %, to $53.9 billion under Bush’s budget. In a request that includes an additional $1.5 trillion package of tax cuts over the next decade and new entitlement spending, the majority of the increases the president is seeking would go to the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Officially created in January, DHS would become a major funding source for R&D, with Bush requesting $1 billion for R&D, according to a preliminary analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Several existing R&D programs in agencies such as the Departments of Transportation and Agriculture would be transferred to DHS, but most of the FY ’04 R&D growth would be seen in the new Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency within DHS. Outside of DOD and DHS, nondefense R&D programs would see increases clustered around the projected 1.9% inflation rate, matched by funding cuts or flat requests. ES&T takes a look at the budget request for environmentrelated funding in several agencies, including the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and EPA, but doesn’t compare the president’s request with funding for the current year (FY ’03). The request was released before Congress completed its appropriations work.
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DOE’s budget favors hydrogen, coal, and nuclear power Coal and nuclear activities related to national and energy security received top priority in the president’s FY ’04 budget request for the Department of Energy (DOE), while funding for most energy efficiency and renewable energy programs remained flat or even declined. The one exception is the administration’s ambitious new plan to develop hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles and the necessary infrastructure to produce, store, and distribute hydrogen fuel. Overall, the $23.4 billion budget request represents a 6% increase over the FY ’03 request, with the bulk of the new money—9%—going to the National Nuclear Security Administration, whose mission is to enhance national security through military use of nuclear energy and to safeguard the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. As shown in Table 1, energy resources and environmental management programs would only increase about 3% each, and science and technology would see less than a 2% rise. In support of Bush’s hydrogen fuel initiatives, which aim to produce vehicles with zero emissions
by 2015, hydrogen programs would see the biggest gains under the request. Bush proposed a 121% increase for hydrogen technology, for a total of $88 million, of which $11.2 million would be used to accelerate research on generating hydrogen from renewable resources, and $18.7 million would go to hydrogen storage R&D. As announced by the president in January, the administration is committed to spending more than $1.2 billion on the hydrogen initiatives over the next five years. For 2004, $169
million was requested to continue FreedomCAR, and a total of $181 million was proposed to move forward with the new hydrogen initiative. Although support for hydrogen technology falls under DOE’s energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, not all of the methods for generating hydrogen are renewable. A close inspection reveals strong support for fossil fuel- and nuclear-based approaches: $12.2 million was proposed to study ways of producing hydrogen from
TA B L E 1
Department of Energy budget Budget amounts are given in millions of dollars.
National Nuclear Security Administration Other defense activities
FY 2002 Actual
FY 2003 Request
FY 2004 Request
Increase from FY ’03 to FY ’04
7619
7934
8759
9.4%
551
445
523
14.9%
Energy resources
2697
2645
2734
3.3%
Science and technology
3263
3256
3311
1.7%
Environmental management
6694
6994
7239
3.4%
Nuclear waste disposal
375
591
591
0.0%
Corporate management and other
119
199
219
9.1%
21,318
22,064
23,376
5.6%
Total
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ther reducing the real amount of money going toward clean renewable resources,” cautions the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit lobbying group. Bush’s Coal Research Initiative (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003, 37, 27A–34A), which is intended to maintain coal as a major, low-cost domestic energy resource, would receive $321 million under the request. Industry-proposed clean coal power projects, which environmentalists claim have failed in the past, would receive $130 million of the funds, and carbon sequestration research would get $62 million, an increase of more than 40% over the 2003 request. The money would go to develop public–private partnerships to address the technical issues related to capturing and permanent storage of carbon dioxide produced by coal combustion. Nuclear power also benefited greatly. The Nuclear Power 2010 program, which aims to build new nuclear power plants by 2010, received $38 million. An additional $10 million was requested for the Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems program to develop advanced technologies for nuclear power plants that are expected to play an important role in generating electricity and hydrogen fuel. The environmental management budget, which saw $1.1 billion in new money in the 2003 request to accelerate cleanup of DOE’s former nuclear weapons sites, received an additional $361 million, for a total of $7.2 billion. The budget request also includes $591 million for the department’s high-level nuclear waste repository program. The money would allow DOE to complete the work needed to apply for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2004 and develop transportation capabilities to begin operations at Yucca Mountain by 2010. —BRITT E. ERICKSON
Hydrogen programs would see the biggest gains under DOE’s FY ’04 request.
News Briefs U.S. greenhouse gas emissions decline Overall U.S. greenhouse gas emissions decreased 1.6% from 2000 to 2001, according to a draft version of the U.S. EPA’s annual emissions inventory. The decline, which is the first since 1990, is primarily due to lower CO2 emissions from the industrial sector brought on by a weakening economy. In addition, an unusually warm winter reduced the demand for heating fuel. Altogether, U.S. emissions of the six main greenhouse gases for 2001 were 6947 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents, with fossil fuel combustion accounting for 80%. From 1990 to 2001, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have risen 13%. Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990−2001 is available at www.epa.gov/globalwarming/ publications/emissions.
Chemicals and health Chemical releases linked to adverse human health effects have shifted from the traditionally industrialized Northeast and Midwest to the once largely agricultural South, according to a report from the environmental advocacy group U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). In their report, Toxic Releases and Health, PIRG researchers used the U.S. EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory data from 1987 to 2000 to quantify industrial releases of five chemicals linked to five categories of health effects— cancer, reproductive disorders, developmental problems, neurological disorders, and respiratory problems—and identified communities that have experienced the greatest releases to air and water. For a copy of the report, go to http://uspirg.org.
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natural gas, $4 million for generating hydrogen from nuclear energy, and $5 million to produce hydrogen from coal. Other energy efficiency and renewable energy programs did not fare as well as hydrogen, infuriating many environmental groups. Wind power is slated to receive a 5.5% decrease, zero-energy buildings would see a whopping 50% cut, biomass/biofuels fell 19%, geothermal technology dropped 3.8%, and solar energy received a slight 0.1% increase. Energy conservation programs decreased 3.9% or $36 million from FY ’03, also outraging environmentalists. Although fuel-cell vehicles and vehicle technologies increased 35% and 3%, respectively, compared with last year’s request, all other technologies, including distributed energy resources, building technologies, industrial technologies, and biomass/biorefinery systems, remained flat or significantly decreased. “This budget shortchanges effective technologies and programs in favor of long-term research that may or may not pay off in the coming decades,” says David Nemtzow, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit group that promotes efficient and clean use of energy. The president’s National Climate Change Technology Initiative (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003, 37, 86A–87A), a government-wide effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, would receive a total of $40 million in DOE’s budget request, which will be split between three program offices—Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy ($24.5 million), Fossil Energy ($13.2 million), and Nuclear Energy ($2.3 million). Not everyone is pleased with how the funds would be divided. “The money appropriated for the climate change initiative can also be used for carbon sequestration projects that benefit fossil fuel sources, fur-
