DOE is Finally Getting the Idea

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the issuance of a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for up to $7 million in federal funding over two years (FY 2008 - 2009) for advanced research and development in converting non-food based biomass to advanced biofuels. Combined with a requirement for private minimum funding of at least 20%, approximately $8.5 million would be invested in this research effort.

Last month, DOE announced two Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA), valued up to $14 million, to better integrate the United States’ universities into DOE’s nuclear research and development (R&D) programs; and contribute to assuring a new generation of engineers and scientists necessary for pursuing nuclear power - a safe, reliable, affordable and emissions-free source of energy. These FOAs support the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) University Readiness and the Nuclear Energy Research Initiative for Consortia (NERI-C). These new awards will bring total Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 funding to universities that support nuclear energy programs to over $54 million.

Last May, DOE announced funding for companies to develop storage solutions, manufacturing approaches, and new system concepts for large-scale concentrating solar power (CSP) plants in hopes of reaching a target of 5-7 ¢/kWh by 2020. This would result in a savings of 36-80 million tons of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere each year relative to coal plants of similar capacity.

Clearly, the United States is not sitting on its laurels waiting for someone else to come up with clean, safe alternative energy sources for our future.

Once the path has been made clear and the door has been opened to a reliable source of renewable energy to wean us off of foreign oil then all of the other pieces of natural energy, i.e., wind power, solar power, wave power, etc, will all fall into place.

In the meantime, DOE is still pursuing exploration and production of domestic resources of natural gas and oil. It is hopeful that very soon a major break-through in alternative research will occur which will alleviate the need for further extraction of gas and oil from geographically challenging areas in such places as offshore deepwater locations and within our national parks.

Now, if only they would halt the misguided and inappropriate use of food crops for biofuel while we research other sources maybe our food prices will come back down.