War goes Green

[ambrosiaD]

I don't know about y'all, but going green does not make me like that Afganistan war any better...

APPROPRIATIONS: Senate includes millions for alternative energy research in defense funding (09/28/2009)
http://www.eenews.net/EEDaily/2009/09/28/
Katherine Ling, E&E reporter
The Senate this week is scheduled to continue its march through fiscal 2010 spending bills with the Defense Appropriations measure, which contains about $75 million for alternative energy research and development projects.
The bill provides a total of $636.3 billion in new discretionary spending for fiscal 2010 for the Pentagon, about $3 billion below the White House budget request but even with the House spending bill (H.R. 3326). It is about $4 billion above 2009 levels.
The White House "strongly supports" the Senate appropriations bill with only a few "additional views" on minor funding cuts and increases, according to the Statement of Administration Policy released Friday.
Included in the Senate bill is an additional $75 million for a range of alternative energy projects as part of the $78.4 billion DOD "research, development, test and evaluation" funding. Despite the addition of the alternative energy-directed funding, the committee's RDTE budget is $164 million below the president's 2010 request, at $78.5 billion.
These "committee initiatives" are separate from member's earmarks in the bill, according to the committee report.
"The items in this category are for programs, projects, or activities which the committee believes are of inherent value for national defense," the report said. The committee views alternative energy -- along with several other programs including environmental restoration -- as "necessary to improve defense even though they have not been included under the request formulated by the administration."
The additional money must be spent only on the specific alternative energy projects and not distributed among all the projects under the line item programs, the report said.
Projects include:

$14 million on the "advanced battery development program" and "hybrid engine development program" for the Army's $186 million Combat Vehicle and Automotive Advanced Technology program.
$2 million for "wave energy harvesting for buoy applications" as the sole project under the Navy's Small Business Innovative Research program.
$5.5 million on "coal transformation laboratory," "development of mobile wind turbine systems to power forward bases," "energy efficiency, recovery and generation," and "energy superior lithium battery technology for defense applications" placed in several Air Force line-item programs.
$17.6 million for "biofuels program," "fuel cell hybrid battery manufacturing for Defense operations," "fuel cell locomotive," "next generation manufacturing technologies initiative," "vehicle fuel cell and hydrogen logistics program," and "woody biomass conversion to JP-8 fuel" in the Defense-wide $42.6 million Generic Logistics R&D Technology Demonstrations.
The bill also includes $1.4 million for a pilot study on the use of DOD land for renewable energy production. Within one year, the committee asks DOD to analyze the potential impact of a program to develop "large-scale renewable electricity generation projects."
The committee bill provides $1.2 billion for environmental restoration projects including $431 million for the Army -- $15 million above the administration budget and House bill -- $286 million for the Navy, $494 million for the Air Force and $11 million for defensewide projects -- all of which match the president's request and the House bill. Legacy environmental restoration received $308 million under the bill, which is $40 million above the White House request and House bill.