Washington – The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden will receive another $99 million in funding this year, a 47 percent bump, the Energy Department announced Friday.
The NREL money is part of a new operating plan the Department of Energy gave Congress, detailing how it will spend the additional money.
The NREL money goes into three categories:
“This funding increase is not just a victory for NREL, it is a victory for consumers and for America’s movement towards energy independence,” said Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.
The amounts given to NREL are almost identical to those that Salazar asked for in a Feb. 8 letter to an Energy Department assistant secretary.
Reps. Mark Udall of Eldorado Springs and Ed Perlmutter of Golden, both Democrats, also praised the increase.
The Department of Energy’s operating plan also includes $115.5 million for Rocky Flats, where cleanup ended last year. Of that, $107 million will go to pensions and retirement benefits and $8.5 million to costs of continued soil and water sampling and wastewater treatment.
The Energy Department, like other federal agencies, had been operating at funding levels for 2006 because Congress failed to pass a new budget for 2007.
