The Department of Energy Fiscal Year 2011 Research and Development Budget Proposal
Opening Statement By Chairman Bart Gordon
I want to welcome everyone to today’s hearing on the Department of Energy’s Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Request.
I especially want to welcome our witness, Secretary Chu.
Dr. Chu, you have sat before this committee on a number of occasions, and you testimony is always valuable and appreciated. With all of the changes at the Department we certainly look forward to an interesting discussion today.
It has been an exciting and historic year for the Department of Energy. The 2009 Recovery Act provided DOE with almost $40 billion to jumpstart our green economy, and to lay a strong foundation for our country’s future through significant investments in research and development.
While this is a tremendous opportunity for the Secretary, it also presents an unprecedented challenge in ramping up programs that, at best, spend around one-tenth of that in a normal year.
I believe we entrusted the right person with this task, and that we will look back on this investment as the one that sowed the seeds of change for a new U.S. economy.
The Recovery Act included $400 million in start-up funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy – ARPA-E – a program we authorized in the America COMPETES Act two years earlier.
As Secretary Chu knows well, I have a strong interest in the success of ARPA-E, and our Committee has been engaged in rigorous oversight of the agency throughout its inception and early development.
Today, I am pleased to say that we are impressed with the progress that you and Dr. Majumdar, ARPA-E’s new Director, have made in such a short amount of time.
In DOE’s history, it had been unheard of to carry out technical reviews of some 3700 proposals - and then to get the money out the door to the winners - within just a few months. We have heard stories on how this experience compares to previous applications to, and negotiations with, DOE. I’d like to hear if there are any positive lessons we can learn from this process that can be applied to the rest of the Department.
So obviously I am happy to see the Administration’s request of $300 million for ARPA-E in FY11, and I believe ARPA-E is moving fast enough to justify an even larger investment in the very near future. But it appears to be an appropriate, well-justified amount to build on the successes we’re seeing today.
I am also pleased with the request for the DOE Office of Science, which – along with the Administration’s requests for NSF and NIST – continues this agency on a doubling path as recommended by the National Academies’ Gathering Storm report to keep America competitive well into the future.
We will be taking another look at these agencies in the reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act this year, and look forward to working with you to make this new bill as strong and effective as we can.
Another area we will be focusing on this year is nuclear energy. I’m sure there will be some lively discussions this afternoon on the Administration’s decision to cut funding for Yucca Mountain, but given the recent assessments by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Academies that a major repository isn’t needed anytime soon – and may never be needed – I’m most interested in where we go from here.
I am pleased that loan guarantees for the first new nuclear plants in three decades have finally been issued, and I’m impressed with the quality of members selected for the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission on nuclear waste, just announced by the President.
I understand that the Department will also be releasing a nuclear energy R&D plan in the near future, and we look forward to reviewing it as soon as possible. We expect this plan to be an important reference as we craft a comprehensive nuclear energy research and development bill this year.
In closing, Secretary Chu, I’ve appreciated working with you over the past year, and urge you and DOE to continue reaching out to us on anything we can do to help you make the Department as effective as possible. With that, I’d like to yield to the Committee’s distinguished Ranking Member, Mr. Hall.
Witnesses
Panel
0 - Dr. Steven Chu
Secretary of Energy U.S. Department of Energy U.S. Department of Energy
Download the Witness Testimony