2007 Saw Large Increase in BioEnergy Funding

From Ethanol Producer Magazine:

“It was an unprecedented year,” says Jacques Beaudry-Losique, DOE program manager for the EERE’s Industrial Technologies Program. “This is probably the largest amount we’ve announced in a very long time. It’s certainly far higher than what was done in previous years.” Perhaps a better metric for evaluating the significance of these investments is the annual budgets for the DOE offices, Beaudry-Losique says. “The budget is really the core sign of commitment and these have been up by at least 30 percent in ’07 and ’08 versus previous years,” he says. Take the EERE, for example. The annual budget for EERE’s Biomass Program has jumped more than 60 percent from $87 million in 2005 to $224 million in 2007. Although the office’s 2008 budget had not been resolved by press time, the U.S. House appropriations bill would increase funding for the Biomass Program to $250 million while the U.S. Senate bill would increase funding to $244 million. “Now they have to agree in conference on what the final number will be so you never know,” Beaudry-Losique says. But “the outlook is very good.”