Energy Policy Act of 2002 Opens R&D Opportunities in Materials
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Energy Policy Act of 2002 Opens R&D Opportunities in Materials Energy is central to our present and future economic prosperity. Because of its importance, improving and strengthening our energy system can provide significant economic benefits for everyone. Similarly, vulnerabilities in our energy system can present major threats to our economic health. The importance of energy to our national well-being is what drove Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and me to introduce S. 1766, the Energy Policy Act of 2002.* Significant changes in energy markets have occurred since the last time Congress considered comprehensive energy legislation. Our last major energy bill was the Energy Policy Act of 1992. Since that time, our society has moved farther away from command-and-control regulation of energy toward a system relying more on market forces to set the price of energy. In the process, energy markets have become more competitive and dynamic, but not without some significant bumps. In response to these changes, challenges, and opportunities, we need new ideas and approaches as well as greater investments to move us into the future. That is what S. 1766 proposes to do. This bill has three overarching goals: ■ to ensure a diversity of fuels and technologies for adequate and affordable supplies of energy, including renewables, natural gas, oil, coal, hydropower, and nuclear power; ■ to improve the efficiency and productivity of our energy use, including the reliability and productivity of our electricitytransmission system, and the efficiency of energy use in industry, vehicles, appliances, and buildings; and ■ to keep in mind other important policy goals, such as protection of the environment and global climate, as we sort through energy policy choices. We can achieve these three goals if we accelerate the development and introduction of new technologies and if we create flexible market conditions that empower energy consumers so that they can make choices that will benefit both them and society. I believe there is a broad consensus in the Senate that new science and new technology are at the core of any solution to our energy challenges. Yet, despite the importance of energy R&D, our recent commitment to it leaves a lot to be desired. Federal energy-technology R&D today is equivalent, in constant dollars, to what it was in 1966. Yet, our economy is three times larger *On February 15, 2002, the bill was introduced as an amendment (SA 2917) to S.517, a bill that covered technology transfer. MRS BULLETIN/MARCH 2002
now than it was then. It is hard to see how we can build a 21st-century energy system on 1960s-level-of-effort R&D budgets. This bill builds these budgets in a rational way to levels that, by 2006, will give us a robust energy R&D effort to support the goals. An example of this increased commitment to energy R&D can be seen in the renewable energy R&D programs at the Department of Energy (DOE). Under S. 1766, these programs will grow from an authorized level of $500 million in fiscal year 200
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