The House passed a government spending bill on Thursday that would provide a small funding boost for energy storage research as part of the appropriations for energy and water development programs in fiscal 2018.
House lawmakers voted 235-192 to pass a “minibus” spending bill that includes $37.56 billion for energy and water development — $3.6 billion more than the White House request. The appropriations bill would then head to the Senate, where similar legislation calls for $38.4 billion in funding for the next fiscal year.
House lawmakers on Wednesday adopted an amendment offered by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) that would shift $10 million from the Energy Department’s administration account to its Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability for energy storage systems demonstrations. Despite the small dollar amount, Gallagher said it’s a sign of bipartisanship on the issue.
“There’s growing, strong support among conservatives for a smart approach to energy that is both environmentally friendly and economically friendly,” Gallagher said in a brief interview Thursday.
The House adopted the amendment by voice vote on the same day the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation published a study that recommends continued federal investment in late-stage energy research. That analysis evaluated 53 demonstration projects initiated between 2009 and 2011 that received federal funding through 2015. Of those, 16 were energy storage projects that relied on the federal government for almost half of their funding, 10 of which have been successfully completed.
“When these projects actually do get built, it’s very rare for them to be built entirely with private funding,” lead author David Hart, former innovation director for the manufacturing industry at the White House during the Obama administration, said at an ITIF panel discussion Wednesday.
Hart, who’s now a senior fellow at ITIF and a professor of public policy at George Mason University, said demonstration projects are integral to the commercialization of technology because complex energy systems need to be developed gradually. The poster child for proper development and deployment, he said, is the Petra Nova carbon capture project in Texas: completed on time, under budget and led by the private sector with the reassurance of federal funding.
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