President Donald Trump’s 2018 budget is pretty terrible. Not only does it cut funding for veterans, the poor, and the disabled, but it also slashes funding for important clean energy research.
The budget also cuts $1.4 billion from the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, dropping the department’s total to $636 million. That’s a reduction of 70 percent compared to the EERE’s 2016 budget.
According to an analysis by the Washington Post:
“Funding to solar energy programs would decline to $69.7 million from $241 million just a year earlier, or over 71 percent, under the proposal. Wind energy research would decline to $31.7 million from $95.27 million, a 67 percent cut.”
The budget would also eliminate the Title XVII clean energy projects loan program. The program provides loans to private-sector renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.
Another victim of the proposed budget: the Energy Star program, which helps consumers make smart choices about the energy efficiency of their appliances and electronic devices. The program has helped save Americans $362 billion in energy costs since 1992.
The administration defended the cuts in its budget blueprint, according to which the reductions return the “sprawling federal government” to its “proper role.”
“[The DOE’s 2018 budget] reflects an increased reliance on the private sector to fund later-stage research, development, and commercialization of energy technologies and focuses resources toward early-stage research and development.”
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, criticized the Trump budget’s proposed cuts to clean energy research in a statement earlier this week:
“His budget proposes a staggering seventy percent cut to renewables and energy efficiency initiatives. This would devastate an emerging sector of our economy by killing thousands of clean-energy jobs all over the country — all in a misguided effort to hold onto the past at the expense of our future.”
Ernest Moniz, who served as the secretary of energy in the Obama administration, was also critical:
“The United States played an indispensable role in creating the Mission Innovation initiative, where 22 nations and the EU have agreed to double governmental investments in clean energy R&D over a five-year period. This administration budget proposal would put us behind China and Europe, blunting our competitive edge in a multi-trillion dollar developing clean energy global market.”
Obviously, any disruption to the clean energy industry would be disastrous for the planet. But these cuts will translate to real economic hardship, too. The first to feel the impact would be the staff of the DOE, which would be forced to reduce its full-time workforce by about 30 percent relative to its 2016 level.
From there, the damage wrought by these budget cuts would ripple out across the country. Clean energy investment in the U.S. totaled $45 billion in 2015. That number might continue to rise even if this budget is approved, but the clean energy industry would face a difficult and uncertain future.
Featured image via YouTube video.
