Obama signs stimulus bill: 10X increase in DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy budget to $16.8 billion including $800 million for Biomass program

In Washington, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which includes $16.8 billion for the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).

The funding is a nearly tenfold increase for EERE, which received $1.7 billion in fiscal year 2008.

While the bulk of the new EERE funding is supporting direct grants and rebates, $2.5 billion will support EERE’s applied research, development, and deployment activities, including $800 million for the Biomass Program, $400 million for the Geothermal Technologies Program, and $50 million for efforts to increase the energy efficiency of information and communications technologies.

Separate from the EERE budget, $400 million will support the establishment of the Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E), an agency to support innovative energy research, modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The complete (496 page) legislation can be downloaded here.

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