$29.5 Billion requested by DoE; $0 for cold fusion

DoE 2012 Budget Highlights Cover
DoE Budget Lowlights?

The Department of Energy DoE released their FY2012 Congressional Budget Request Budget Highlights. download .pdf

“The Department’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget request is $29.5 billion, an 11.8 percent or $3.1 billion increase from FY 2010 current appropriation levels.”

“The central theme of this year’s budget in SC [Office of Science] is research in new technologies for a clean energy future that address competing demands on our environment,” the document states.

In FY 2012, the [SC] Department requests $5.4 billion, an increase of 9.1 percent over the FY 2010 current appropriation, to invest in basic research. The FY 2012 request supports the President’s Strategy for American Innovation, and is consistent with the goal of doubling funding at key basic research agencies, including the Office of Science. The FY 2012 Office of Science budget request supports the following objectives from the Strategy, including:
— Unleash a clean energy revolution
— Strengthen and broaden American leadership in fundamental research
— Develop an advanced information technology ecosystem
— Educate the next generation with 21st century skills and create a world-class workforce.

Program Office Highlights DoE FY2012 Budget Request page 7

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is one of many DoE offices that claim to be “Investing in Breakthrough Technology and a Clean Energy Future.” Their FY 2012 budget request for $3.2 billion is “aimed at accelerating innovation and change in the Nation’s energy economy.” This includes programs that with meet with the President’s goals of “investing in the next generation of clean energy technologies“, among other things.

But the bulk of these requested monies will fund traditional alternative energies that have been in development, and funded, for decades:

The FY 2012 budget request continues to work to transform the Nation’s energy infrastructure by investing over $1,164.9 million in a variety of renewable programs including solar ($457.0 million), wind ($126.9 million), water ($38.5 million), hydrogen ($100.5 million), biomass ($340.5 million), and geothermal ($101.5 million). Research, development, and deployment of these technologies will reduce the production of greenhouse gas emissions and revitalize an economy built on the next generation of domestic production.
Program Office Highlights DoE FY2012 Budget Request page 8

The DoE office “devoted exclusively to funding specific highrisk, high payoff, game-changing research and development projects to meet the nation’s long-term energy challenges” will get <more than half-a-billion dollars.

Specifically, ARPA-E‘s budget request, ‘detailed’ on page 23 of the document, totals $650 billion.

Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy: Transformational Research and Development
The FY 2012 budget request includes $550 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), a program launched in FY 2009 that sponsors specific high-risk and high-payoff transformational research and development projects that overcome the long-term technological barriers in the development of energy technologies to meet the Nation’s energy challenges, but that industry will not support at such an early stage.

An additional $100 million in mandatory funding is also proposed from the Wireless Innovation Fund for developing cutting-edge wireless technologies. An essential component of ARPA-E’s culture is an overarching focus on accelerating science to market.

Beyond simply funding transformational research creating revolutionary technologies, ARPA-E is dedicated to the market adoption of those new technologies that will fuel the economy, create new jobs, reduce energy imports, improve energy efficiency, reduce energy-related emissions, and ensure that the U.S. maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies.

Nowhere in the budget is found the words low-energy nuclear reactions LENR, lattice-assisted nuclear reactions LANR, chemically-assisted nuclear reactions CANR, condensed matter nuclear science CMNS, nickel-hydrogen exothermic reaction Ni-H, or cold fusion, despite meeting each of the Department of Energy’s Objectives.

DoE Objective – Unleash a clean energy revolution

The revolutionary energy from cold fusion comes from the Fleischmann-Pons “Excess Heat” Effect FPE.

Hydrogen isotopesWhen hydrogen, or its isotope deuterium, is absorbed by a metal like nickel or palladium, large amounts of heat can be generated. This heat can make useful steam, hot, clean water and eventually, electricity.

Hydrogen is an element abundant in water. Access to water means access to fuel, empowering local communities with their own energy sources.

Metals like nickel are plentiful on the Earth, as well as the moon and asteroids. Costs for these and other metals will be low. And this energy is powerful enough to make ecological mining practices economically viable and standard.

Large energy returns of 25 have been published, and energy returns of 400 and higher have been demonstrated. A planned commercial steam generator is the size of a cigarette pack and expected to generate 10 kilowatts of power.

DoE Objective – Strengthen and broaden American leadership in fundamental research

Internal view of a cold fusion cell.
Internal view of an experimental cold fusion cell.

New technologies using the FPE have been developed largely by trial and error, without the benefit of a guiding theory. Basic research is sorely needed to define what the parameters for successful, and maximal, output of energy are.

Experiments have yielded multiple effects other than excess heat like transmutation, even in biological organisms, where current research may lead to ridding the world of the stockpile of radioactive waste.

The research possibilities are endless.

DoE Objective – Develop an advanced information technology ecosystem

Few could imagine the way personal computers developed in the 1980s would literally change the way we live as they did. New jobs and new businesses can thrive in a service environment for clean cold fusion energy.

As a decentralized power source, cold fusion energy devices do not need a grid delivery system. Units can be designed stand-alone and portable.

Scalable power sources could be built into even the smallest hand-held devices, providing power for the life of the device, with no need to recharge.

DoE Objective – Educate the next generation with 21st century skills and create a world-class workforce.

Pacific OceanA cold fusion economy means opportunities for training in new energy. Basic research means jobs for young scientists, with the meaningful and exciting work of building a future based on clean and plentiful energy.

Cold fusion meets the objectives, and then some.
What kind of funding would make a difference?

In an earlier interview with James Martinez, longtime researcher based in Washington D.C. David J. Nagel described a 5-year program starting at $20 million a year, ramping up to $40 million annually, an average $30 million a year for five years to bring this research to the next phase, and more importantly, as Dr. Nagel describes, bring a young group of scientists into this field of research to continue to innovate and drive the next-generation energy for our planet.

$150 million for cold fusion, half-of-one percent of DoE requested budget for 2012.

EarthThe document is filled with phrases like “energy security” and “American leadership in innovation”, visual-space divisions that are relevant no more to an alliance of peoples across this planet who live in an invisible spacetime of digital-satellite-wireless electromagnetic resonance, and who realize the need for a new arrangement for living on Earth.

Creating a new economy cannot be done by the US, or any one nation, alone. There is a new world to create, one that requires participation and cooperation from people united on every continent.

How will this move forward?

Within the context of maplines, this scenario was posited by Kiva Labs cold fusion researcher Dr. Edmund Storms, way back in 2010:

“Sooner or later scientists in some country will discover how to make cold fusion work on a commercial scale. When this happens, the countries that develop this technology will rapidly become richer and more powerful. The cost of energy for manufacturing will go down and processes that are not yet practical under most conditions, such as obtaining fresh water from the sea, will become widely used.

These benefits will cause a rapid expansion in the power and influence of the countries using this inexpensive energy source. What about the countries that do not know how to make the effect work?

Their scientists will attempt to reverse engineer the power generator, but in this field, such efforts will be difficult without an understanding of how the process works, an understanding that will not be shared by the discovers.

Also, highly developed countries will have difficulty removing their present energy infrastructure and substituting this much simpler source. So, the race is on and the potential winners are not obvious.

Nevertheless, it is obvious the winner will not be a country that ignores and rejects the reality of cold fusion.”
Edmund Storms Why is cold fusion rejected?

Perusing the DoE budget request is like forensics on a phantom limb, gone but not forgotten: there will be no federal funding for this field of new energy anytime soon.

But thank you Mr. Sidney Kimmel!

News like “Billionaire helps fund MU energy research” from the Columbia Daily Tribune is welcome, and desperately needed.

Cold Fusion Now!

Related Links

Billionaire helps fund MU energy research by Janese Silvey Columbia Daily Tribune

Department of Energy Budget and Performance

ARPA-E answers questions about fulfilling mission by Ruby Carat February 9, 2012

Letters to Congressional Energy Sub-committees repeat hearings request by Ruby Carat November 13, 2011

David J. Nagel on Ca$h Flow: A Reasoned Approach to Funding with James Martinez by Ruby Carat August 24, 2010

Why is cold fusion rejected? by Edmund Storms July 20, 2010

Robert Duncan interview on Cash-Flow: “Public investment means public ownership.” with James Martinez by Ruby Carat February 6, 2011

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