Not Just One Year's Budget: Shitstain's Slash-And-Burn Science Funding Will Echo For Years
At the Ames Laboratory, a national energy lab in the heart of Iowa, scientists and engineers are developing low-cost substitutes for the rare-earth metals used in electric-vehicle batteries and solar cells to reduce the need for imports from geopolitical rivals like China. It's the kind of foundational research and development being carried out at national labs across the country that has helped to dramatically lower energy technology costs and pushed clean energy toward a tipping point.
But that renewable energy work and its local economic impact are at risk in the Trump administration's budget proposal for the coming year. The administration's proposal would zero out energy efficiency and renewable energy (EERE) funding at the Ames lab and would slash similar funding by more than half at almost all of the national labs with EERE programs. With labs targeted for cuts in more than a dozen states, each representing jobs and local economic impact, the budget plan isn't likely to get through Congress without major changes, but scientists say that kind of proposal alone can have a chilling impact.
At the flagship National Renewable Energy Lab, where breakthroughs in solar, wind and electric vehicle technology have increased energy efficiency and lowered costs, the administration's proposed budget would leave wind power projects with a third of their current funding. Work on energy efficient buildings technologies, targeting another major source of greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change, would be left with less than 8 percent of current funding, according to the budget documents released in March by the Department of Energy. In all, the proposed budget would cut 86 percent of new spending for the Energy Department and labs' work in energy efficiency and renewable energy, going from nearly $2.4 billion to a proposed $343 million.
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A larger concern is that the administration is eroding the country's science infrastructure, said Carter of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who previously was a scientist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The administration is succeeding at sending a message to scientists that their work is not valued and that they will face ongoing instability about budgets, he said. The Union of Concerned Scientists found low morale in a survey of federal scientists last year. It didn't include employees of the national labs, but Carter suspects that there are similar problems there.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02042019/trump-budget-cuts-national-labs-clean-energy-leadership-solar-wind-electric-vehicles-climate-change
