ARPA-E

Trump’s Biggest Anti-Environmental Fail

He did his best to destroy EPA completely. But his devastating budget proposals got nowhere.

Trump was awful for the environment. But he wanted to be even worse. If Trump had had his way, only shreds of key environmental agencies would now be left. Although Trump has certainly succeeded in weakening them, the cores of the agencies remain intact.  Without them, Biden’s task would be much harder. Trump’s budgets unvaryingly …

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Energy Innovation and the Feds

Even under unified GOP rule, the federal government remains firmly committed to energy research.

Energy research is alive and well, notwithstanding Trump’s antipathy to research in general and climate/energy research in particular. We mostly associate energy research with the Department of Energy, its network of national labs, and its ARPA-E program. I’ve written previously about those programs and the importance of energy innovation. But it turns out that a …

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Environmental Budget Update

Trump’s brutal attack on environmental spending seems mired in Congress.

It was clear early on that the stop-gap funding measure rejected Trump’s budget priorities.  Emerging details about the bill demonstrate how starkly Trump lost. Environmental and energy programs survived with very little damage. Let’s begin with the EPA budget.  Trump sought an immediate cut, followed by a 33% cut in the next budget.  Instead, EPA …

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An Energy No-Brainer

There are a lot of things to disagree about in terms of energy policy.  One thing that ought to be common ground, as discussed in a Washington Post column, is increased research in energy R&D.  As this chart shows, federal support for energy R&D is smaller than it was under Ronald Reagan: The economic argument …

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