Reid: Renewables shorted by Bush budget

By Phoebe Sweet (contact)

Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008 | 2 a.m.

President Bush has again chosen to subsidize coal and nuclear power rather than renewable energy, environmental groups protested Tuesday following the release of his $25 billion federal Energy Department budget.

Bush’s last budget request as president includes $1.4 billion to promote new nuclear power plants, $9.1 billion to safeguard the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal and $1.1 billion to research technology that reduces greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired plants.

Bush also requested nearly half a billion dollars for the planned nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

“Why would he consider doing this when he didn’t get what he wanted last year?” said the project’s leading opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., adding that the only consolation was that last year Bush asked for $1 billion for Yucca.

And although some environmentalists say they aren’t entirely opposed to funding research into ways to reprocess spent nuclear fuel or trap and store carbon dioxide emissions, they say they are opposed to that research coming at the expense of the renewable energy industry and energy efficiency programs.

“The way the president’s budget reads, it’s one or the other, when what should come first are renewables and efficiency,” said Ned Farquhar, Western energy and climate advocate of the National Resources Defense Council and former energy adviser to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. “That’s what the public wants, not just in Nevada but nationwide.”

Farquhar said the president’s budget appears to increase funding for advanced research on fossil fuels and nuclear technology by the same amount it cuts from an efficiency program that pays to weatherize poor people’s homes.

“The budget undermines assistance for low-income families hardest hit by the energy crisis,” he said. “The president’s priorities appear to be feeding money into large, academic, futuristic programs instead of efficiency that could benefit people today.”

Critics of the budget agreed that perhaps the most important thing it’s missing reauthorization of tax credits for renewable energy developers. The credits are set to expire at the end of the year.

“That’s what would really help the industry most. And unless it gets renewed soon it really brings investment to a standstill,” said Charles Benjamin, director of the Nevada office of Western Resources Advocates.

Reid said those tax credits would bring jobs and investment to Nevada. Reid opposes plans to build three new coal-fired plants in Nevada, two near Ely and one outside Mesquite.

Reid promised to fight Bush over the budget, which he said improves funding for coal by 25 percent and for nuclear energy by 37 percent while decreasing spending on renewables and efficiencies by almost 30 percent.

“We have a country that is smothering itself with smoke from coal and oil, and we need to move to more efficient uses of what we have and move to renewables,” Reid said Tuesday, adding that the Bush budget was cutting from an already small subsidy for the renewables industry.

Energy Department spokeswoman Megan Barnett defended the budget, saying it includes funding for a broad range of energy, fuel and transportation sources that would decrease the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“To meet the nation’s voracious demand for energy while addressing the challenge of global climate change, DOE is making robust investments in a diversity of energy sources,” she said. “In addition, DOE’s loan guarantee program has over $38 billion in authority to guarantee loans for clean energy technologies that avoid, reduce or sequester greenhouse gas emissions.”

Bush requested $1.25 billion, $1 million more than last year, for clean fuel, energy and vehicle research.

Some environmentalists and Democrats said they weren’t surprised by the budget.

“After seven years of failed energy policy, we are still hearing the same arguments from the Bush White House,” Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in a statement Tuesday. “Given this record, it comes as no surprise that the president is proposing to increase funding for nuclear energy and coal when we should be charting a new course to energy independence based on solar, wind, geothermal and other forms of green power. As we have seen once again in this latest State of the Union address, the president says one thing, only to turn right around and do the opposite in his annual budget when it comes to renewable energy.”

Scot Rutledge, executive director of the Nevada Conservation League, said the coal and nuclear industries have been relying on government support to stay afloat for years.

“The lion’s share has gone to fossil fuel industries and the nuclear industry for decades,” Rutledge said. “If the coal industry is interested in staying in business you would think it would spend a little more of its own money” on research and development.

Joe Lucas, president of the energy lobby group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, which paid for recent ads supporting coal in Nevada, said the industry has partnered with the federal government on clean coal research since the 1980s.

But Lucas said he, too, was disappointed with the president’s budget, because it scraps funding of the experimental FutureGen project, a nearly $2 billion “clean coal” plant with carbon capture, in favor of funding smaller research projects.

“We should be finding ways to invest in all of these projects,” he said. “We need to be spending more money, not less money,” if the industry is to comply with carbon limits being discussed by Congress.

Lucas also said it makes sense that coal and nuclear power would receive more federal support, because they provide a combined 70 percent of the nation’s electricity.

The House and Senate will each create its own budget, and then they will hash out their differences so they can present one budget to the president for approval. Reid did not rule out waiting until January to pass a budget so that it would go to the next president.

Sun reporter Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.