Washington (Platts)--9May2008

Three US lawmakers on Friday said they would pursue a new five-year
effort to support research aimed at developing clean supplies of energy within
the US.
The lawmakers from Tennessee--Republicans Senator Lamar Alexander and
Representative Zach Wamp and Democratic Representative Bart Gordon--compared
the plan to the Manhattan Project, a massive World War II effort that led to
the development of the atomic bomb.
"Instead of ending a war, the goal will be clean energy independence so
that we can deal with rising gasoline prices, electricity prices, clean air,
climate change and national security for our country first, and, because other
countries have the same urgent needs and therefore will adopt our ideas, for
the rest of the world," Alexander said.
Alexander said legislators, policymakers and scientists must hold a
wide-ranging discussion before creating a formal proposal, although he laid
out seven "grand challenges" that the project should address.
The energy project should focus on developing plug-in electric
vehicles, carbon capture and storage, solar power competitiveness, cheaper
advanced biofuels, nuclear waste solutions, environmentally friendly buildings
and power from nuclear fusion, especially through the international ITER
project.
Within five years, the energy project needs to put the US on a path to
energy independence within a generation, Alexander said.
The lawmakers did not discuss funding for this proposal. Related projects
have experienced some problems securing research support in recent years.
Bart Gordon, who is chairman of the House Science and Technology
Committee, said the program could be modeled on the still nascent Advanced
Research Projects Agency at US Department of Energy called ARPA-E.
Congress authorized $4.9 billion for ARPA-E in the 2007 America COMPETES
Act, but the Bush administration has argued that its mission already is being
fulfilled by smaller programs and has yet to request funding for the program.
Gordon also said the US should look to increase its international
collaboration to make better use of what funding is available.
Federal funding for DOE's Office of Science, which oversees the national
laboratories and many energy research projects in the US, suffered from
appropriations levels that were not up to expectations in fiscal 2008. While
President Bush and lawmakers have said they will push for higher funding in
fiscal 2009, Byron Dorgan, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Energy and
Water Development subcommittee has warned that competing needs may mean
research will continue to see flat funding levels.
--Derek Sands, derek_sands@platts.com