Department of Energy

Congress sent two bills to the president last week that provide policy direction to the Department of Energy Office of Science and Office of Nuclear Energy, respectively. The House also passed legislation to establish a National Quantum Initiative, which now awaits action in the Senate.

Congress has finalized a spending bill for fiscal year 2019 that would raise the Department of Energy Office of Science’s budget by 5 percent and the department’s applied research offices’ budgets by between 2 and 10 percent. If enacted quickly, as expected, the legislation will provide DOE with on-time funding for the first time in two decades.

At a July hearing, the House Science Committee discussed promising applications of machine learning techniques to scientific research and the Department of Energy’s role in supporting advanced computing infrastructure.

The National Academies released a report this week that backs the case for constructing a U.S.-based electron ion collider, a large-scale facility designed to enable new investigations in fundamental nuclear physics.

President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Energy’s Office of Science received bipartisan praise at a Senate confirmation hearing on June 26, while Democratic senators expressed concerns about his nominee to lead the department’s renewable energy R&D office.

In their fiscal year 2019 spending bills, House and Senate appropriators again reject the Trump administration’s proposal for deep cuts to the Department of Energy’s applied energy R&D programs, and they state their opposition to its policy of focusing support on “early-stage” research.

The House Science Committee plans to introduce a bill next month that would create a 10-year National Quantum Initiative aimed at increasing America’s strategic focus on quantum information science and technology development.

Draft spending bills advanced this week in the House offer initial indications of the outlook for federal science funding in fiscal year 2019. The picture emerging is largely positive, with House appropriators seeking substantial increases for several science agencies.

Increasing the odds that the fruits of federally funded R&D traverse the so-called “valley of death” between the lab and the market without spoiling has emerged as a top priority of the Trump administration.

At a hearing on the fiscal year 2019 Department of Energy budget, Senate appropriators questioned the rationale behind the administration’s proposed spending cuts to energy R&D programs and made clear they will reject them again this year.