Proposed FY Budget Falls Short on Energy Efficiency Funding
President Bush’s recently proposed fiscal year 2008 budget cuts funding to federal efficiency programs by 18 percent overall compared to the FY 2006 appropriation.
President Bush’s recently proposed fiscal year 2008 budget cuts funding to federal efficiency programs by 18 percent overall compared to the FY 2006 appropriation.
According to the
Alliance to Save Energy and
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), the proposed FY 2008 budget signals that energy efficiency is not among the administration’s high-priority programs.
“This is particularly disheartening given that energy efficiency represents the most cost-effective and quickest way to tackle two issues that the president declared of utmost national importance in the State of the Union: to reduce our dangerous dependence on oil and to ‘confront the serious challenge of global climate change,’” says Alliance president Kateri Callahan.
“The good news is that Congress has signaled its intent to make energy efficiency programs a priority notwithstanding the budget request of the administration,” says Callahan. “The House has adopted a continuing resolution (CR) for the current fiscal year that adds $300 million for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs over what was provided in FY '06, and the Senate is poised to do the same.”
According to ACEEE, the proposed budge also also sacrifices important efficiency programs to fund a few Administration priorities. For example, low-income weatherization is cut $98 million, industrial efficiency programs $13 million, vehicles technologies $3 million, and federal energy management $3 million in order to support increases in hydrogen ($59 million), solar ($66 million), and biomass ($90 million). The request also cuts about $46 million from distributed energy systems in the Office of Electricity budget.
If Congress ratifies the proposed budget, energy efficiency funding would be roughly 37 percent lower, after inflation, than fiscal year 2002 federal funding for these programs, according to the Alliance.
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