Isra-Mart srl : Energy and water projects slashed as EPA faces 16 per cent budget cut

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The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may have avoided a government shutdown and Republican policy riders that would have halted all spending related to climate change regulations, but the organisation is still facing deep cuts to many of its green programmes under the budget agreement thrashed out late last week.

Details of the spending bill - which will fund the federal government until September - were released yesterday, revealing that, while Republicans failed to strip the EPA of its ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, they did force Democrats to agree to a 16 per cent budget cut for the agency.
Under the deal, EPA funding for the fiscal year running to the end of September will be cut by $1.49bn when compared to fiscal 2010 levels.

Funding for the EPA's climate change-related programmes will face cuts of 13 per cent, or $49m, including a block on all funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climate science service and an end to funding for the White House energy and climate change advisor, a position that has been empty since the resignation of former 'climate tsar' Carol Browner.

Similarly, spending on the EPA's Land and Water Conservation Fund will be slashed by $149m, or 33 per cent, compared to 2010.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson admitted to reporters yesterday that "some programmes will be cut back" as a result of the new budget.

She added that the deepest cuts would fall on funds that help states deliver pollution abatement projects.

More widely, a raft of environmental and energy projects face significantly reduced budgets, with the bill proposing cuts to energy and water programmes of $31.8bn, or five per cent, while cuts to interior and environment spending will total $29.6bn, or a reduction of 8.1 per cent on 2010 levels.

Controversially, the bill will also delist wolves as an endangered species for states that are planning "wolf management" initiatives, and place a cap on the level of funds the Interior Department is allowed to use for its "wild lands" policy, which seeks to extend protection for areas that do not have official wilderness status.

The House Appropriations Committee said in a statement that the cuts would "further the House Republican commitment to deficit reduction and reining in the size of government, while at the same time protecting American security, providing support for private sector growth, and promoting a balanced national energy supply".

However, the scale and targeted nature of the cuts has angered green groups and businesses, with campaigners noting that the cuts imposed on the EPA and other environmental programmes are significantly deeper than those faced by many other departments.

There was some good news for low carbon projects, with the budget agreement providing funds for existing applications for loan guarantees from renewable energy projects. The Department of Energy responded to the deal this week by approving two major loan guarantees worth $3.3bn to two solar projects in California.