Hill Heat

Subcommittee hearing on the $51.42 billion Department of Energy FY2025 budget request, which has a 9% increase in defense spending and a 5% increase in non-defense spending from FY2023.

• Budget in brief

Witness:

• Jennifer M. Granholm, Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy

The Budget includes $10.6 billion in DOE climate and clean energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment programs, including over $1 billion to improve technologies to cut pollution from industrial facilities, nearly $900 million to commercialize technologies like sustainable aviation fuel and zero-emission trucks to cut emissions from the transportation sector, and over $2.4 billion – a majority of which is included in the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Program – to improve carbon pollution-free electricity generation, transmission, distribution, and storage technologies for reliability, resilience, and decarbonization. Specifically, within the EERE Program, the budget includes $502 million for Vehicle Technologies Office, $280 million for Bioenergy Technologies Office, $318 million for Solar Energy Technologies Office, $199 million for Wind Energy Technologies Office, $179 million for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, and over $500 million for Advanced Materials/Manufacturing and Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonation Offices. In addition, the Budget invests in advancing climate modeling within the Biological and Environmental Research Program in the Office of Science. By investing $966 million in discretionary DOE industrial decarbonization activities, the Budget reflects the importance of supporting U.S. industrial decarbonization through innovation, targeted investment, and technical assistance. The Budget includes $8.5 billion across DOE to support researchers and entrepreneurs transforming innovations into commercial clean energy products, including in areas such as: offshore wind, industrial heat, sustainable aviation fuel, and grid infrastructure. Across DOE, the Budget provides over $325 million to support the research, development and commercialization of technologies and processes to increase the domestic supply of sustainable critical minerals and materials essential for several clean energy technologies. The Budget supports $76 million to advance technologies that can enable earlier detection of methane leaks and integrate across a network of methane monitoring sensors for more reliable measurement and mitigation and $150 million to make small quantities of high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) available for ongoing advanced nuclear reactor demonstrations. The Budget also assumes enactment of the Administration’s request for $2.16 billion in FY 2024 supplemental funding to procure low-enriched uranium (LEU) and HALEU, which coupled with a long- term ban on imports of LEU and HALEU from Russia, would prompt sufficient private sector investment to reinvigorate U.S. uranium enrichment and reduce our current dependence on Russian imports for roughly 20 percent of LEU used in civilian nuclear power reactors. The $8.5 billion also includes $845 million for a Department-wide initiative to accelerate the viability of commercial fusion energy, coordinating academia, national laboratories, and the private sector, which supports the Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy. The Budget funds eight crosscutting DOE Energy Earthshots™ initiatives which could substantially reduce the cost of energy for the American consumer through innovations in clean energy generation, energy efficiency, and storage. In addition, the Budget provides $30 million to accelerate commercial demonstration projects through a new National Laboratory Demonstration Support Program.

The Budget provides a historic investment of $25 billion in the Nation’s nuclear security enterprise to implement the President’s National Defense Strategy and the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), including $19.9 billion for Weapons Activities.

The Budget includes $141.7 million for the Energy Information Agency (EIA).