The House and Senate Appropriations Committees released their first package of fiscal year (FY) 2024 appropriations bills on Sunday, boosting to over $8 billion the budget for the Energy Department’s (DoE) Office of Science which is responsible for overseeing programs funded by the CHIPS and Science Act, among others.
The appropriations package contains six spending bills necessary to keep a subset of government agencies funded before the current continuing resolution (CR) spending agreement expires on Friday and triggers a partial government shutdown. The bills cover spending for FY2024, which ends on Sept. 30.
The package contains the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, which provides $17.28 billion for DoE’s non-defense programs.
“This bipartisan bill strengthens our investments in cutting-edge scientific research, protects critical funding to propel renewable energy research and climate projects, helps keep America’s grid secure and keep water flowing to our farms, and so much more,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and interim chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.
The bill includes $8.24 billion in new directed funding – $140 million over the enacted FY2023 level – for the DoE’s Office of Science. According to a summary of the bill, “this funding will help implement the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.”
President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law in August 2022, making up to $52 billion of funding available to incentivize semiconductor makers to establish new manufacturing operations in the United States.
The Office of Science has a wide range of responsibilities under the CHIPS and Science Act, but it is largely responsible for overseeing the national labs and use-inspired research.
“The Office of Science is the largest Federal sponsor of basic research in the physical sciences and supports 22,000 researchers at 17 national laboratories and more than 300 universities,” the summary of the spending bill says. “The bill continues to advance the highest priorities in materials research, high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, biology, and clean energy research to maintain and strengthen our global competitiveness.”
In addition to providing funding to DoE’s Office of Science, the bill also provides $200 million to the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) “to help ensure the continued success of the department’s programs aimed at strengthening the security and resilience of our energy sector and grid.”
The bill also provides $280 million for the Office of Electricity, as well as $60 million to formally establish the Grid Deployment Office “to help deploy transmission for the buildout of clean energy.”
