Statement by Secretary Granholm on the President's FY22 Discretionary Funding Request

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Biden-Harris Administration today submitted to Congress the President’s priorities for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 discretionary spending. The funding request of $46.1 billion details major investments in key Department of Energy (DOE) efforts to research, develop, and deploy clean energy technologies necessary to reach President Biden’s goals on climate change. These historic investments in American innovation reflect the Administration’s commitment to DOE’s mission to deliver an equitable clean energy future that reduces the health impacts of pollution and increases America’s global competitiveness, while employing millions of Americans in good-paying union jobs.

“To win the future, America must claim its stake in a growing $23 trillion global clean energy market—that’s why President Biden wants to supercharge investments in our country and our people and build world-leading clean energy industries here at home,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Alongside the American Jobs Plan, this funding request offers the major investments we need to tackle the climate crisis, while simultaneously increasing our economic competitiveness, ensuring overlooked communities benefit from the clean energy revolution, and creating millions of good paying, union jobs across America.”

The President’s FY22 discretionary request:

• Creates Jobs Through Clean Energy Projects and Energy Efficiency Retrofits. The discretionary request invests $1.9 billion in a Building Clean Energy Projects and Workforce Initiative at DOE to begin the vital task of achieving carbon pollution free electricity by 2035 while creating good-paying new jobs. Investments would support: programmatic infrastructure for a new energy efficiency and clean electricity standard; a new Build Back Better Challenge Grant competition to incentivize novel state-, local-, and tribal-level approaches to clean energy deployment that provide benefits to marginalized and overburdened communities; and streamlined transmission permitting.
   
• Spurs Innovation in Clean Energy Technologies. The 2022 discretionary request puts the nation on a path to quadruple clean energy research government-wide in four years, emphasizing U.S. preeminence in developing innovative technologies needed to tackle the climate crisis. Within DOE, the discretionary request invests more than $8 billion, an increase of at least 27 percent over 2021 funding, in technology such as advanced nuclear energy technologies, electric vehicles, green hydrogen, and even innovative approaches to air conditioning and refrigeration. These investments would leverage the tremendous innovation capacity of the National Laboratories, universities, and entrepreneurs to transform America’s power, transportation, buildings, and industrial sectors to achieve a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
   
• Revitalizes the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. The discretionary request supports increased funding for a revitalized Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. This funding would advance carbon reduction and mitigation in sectors and applications that are difficult to decarbonize, including the industrial sector, with technologies and methods such as carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and direct air capture—all while ensuring that overburdened communities are protected from increases in cumulative pollution.
   
• Advances Breakthrough Solutions for Climate and Clean Energy. The discretionary request provides a total of $1 billion for a new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Climate and the existing Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, of which $700 million is funded through DOE. Together, these initiatives would support transformative solutions for carbon-pollution free energy, adaptation, and resilience against the climate crisis and lay the foundation for future improvements in research and development across multiple agencies.
   
• Expands Foundational Research, Emphasizing Climate and Clean Energy Science. The discretionary request invests $7.4 billion, an increase of more than $400 million over the 2021 level, in the Office of Science to: better understand the changing climate; identify and develop novel materials and concepts for clean energy technologies of the future; advance artificial intelligence and computing to enhance prediction and decision-making across numerous environmental and scientific challenges; and support the National Laboratory network with cutting-edge scientific facilities.
   
• Invests in Minority-Serving Institutions. The discretionary request creates and enhances research funding opportunities and invests in infrastructure such as laboratory facilities and information technology upgrades for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs). The discretionary request also increases resources for workforce development programs to augment pathways to good-paying science, technology, engineering, and math careers for students attending these schools. New grant awards, including a research center focused on climate, would expand research capacity and create new opportunities at HBCUs and other MSIs.
   
• Supports Coal and Power Plant Communities. The discretionary request funds DOE’s role in supporting the newly established Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization. The discretionary request also supports the POWER+ Initiative and complements other targeted investments across the Federal Government to help communities impacted by the energy transition and ensure their success.
   
• Strengthens the Nation’s Nuclear Security. The discretionary request supports a safe, secure, and effective nuclear stockpile and a continued modernization program that includes the recapitalization of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s physical infrastructure and essential facilities to ensure the deterrent remains viable. The discretionary request also funds key nuclear nonproliferation and counterterrorism programs, increases funding for the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, which designs, builds, operates, maintains, and manages the reactor systems of the naval nuclear fleet, and increases the number of highly-skilled staff to carry out these missions. In addition, the discretionary request sustains the nation’s investment in cleanup of World War II and Cold War nuclear sites. Included as part of the discretionary request for DOE nuclear facility cleanup is $831 million for the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning (UED&D) Fund. The request proposes to finance this activity through approximately $416 million of appropriations from the U.S. Enrichment Corporation Fund to the UED&D Fund and appropriations from defense funding into the UED&D Fund. The request does not change historical operation of the UED&D Fund.

These discretionary investments reflect only one element of the President’s broader agenda. In the coming months, the Administration will release the President’s budget, which will present a unified, comprehensive plan to address the overlapping crises we face in a fiscally and economically responsible way.

For more information on the President’s FY22 discretionary funding request, please visit: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/FY-2022-Discretionary-Request.