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The House and Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucuses, along with the Sustainable Energy Coalition and the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), sponsored a Congressional briefing on the U.S. Department of Energy’s renewable energy and energy efficiency budget for FY2003. The panel of speakers discussed the importance of robust funding for energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies, and their contributions to economic development and national energy security. In addition, a comparison was made with international trends in clean energy research, development and deployment.
Representatives Mark Udall (D-CO) and Senators Wayne Allard (R-CO) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND), co-chairs of the House and Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucuses, provided opening remarks. Carol Werner, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, moderated the briefing. The expert panel included:
The federal government's renewable energy and energy efficiency programs are key components of the nation's effort to increase security and stimulate the economy. Clean energy technologies enhance America's energy security by promoting fuel diversity; harnessing safe and abundant domestic resources; and expanding the use of small-scale, dispersed, and passively-safe technologies - all of which can be built and operated without imposing new security burdens on the nation's energy infrastructure. Furthermore, the clean energy industry supported by these programs have created hundreds of new domestic businesses, support thousands of American jobs, and keep U.S. energy dollars at home.
The U.S. national laboratories manage renewable energy and energy efficiency programs that are productive and cost-effective, successfully bringing innovative energy technologies from the lab to the marketplace. For example, at the request of Congress, the National Research Council recently completed a review of energy efficiency research supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) from 1978 to 2000. The Council found that these programs produced substantial benefits which led to improvements in the economy, environment, and national energy security. Indeed, six of the advanced technologies that were supported by these research programs will yield some $30 billion in net economic benefits, as compared with DOE's entire investment in energy efficiency research of $7 billion since 1978. And modest investments in renewable energy research and development over the last two decades has paid big dividends, such as the price of wind energy dropping more than 80 percent. In addition, photovoltaic modules have lowered in cost by nearly a factor of ten, and the cost of solar systems has been reduced by 50 percent in the last decade.
For more information about this briefing, please contact Beth Bleil of EESI at 202-662-1885 or bbleil@eesi.org. For more information about the House Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus, please contact Jennifer Barrett in Rep. Mark Udall's office at 202-225-2161; and for more information about the Senate Caucus, please contact Ladeene Freimuth in Sen. Dorgan’s office at 202-224-2551 or Mandi McKinley in Sen. Allard’s office at 202-224-5941.