On October 9th, congressman Bart Gordon introduced bill HR3776 to Congress.
This bill is the Energy Storage Technology Advancement Act of 2007. As we’ve discussed previously Denise Gray, battery czar of GM gave testimony to Mr. Gordon’s science committee in support of this research funding (previous post). We also were able to get a comment from the congressman (previous post)
The bill, in addition to static energy storage systems, includes funding for energy storage systems for vehicles. It includes provisions for basic and applied research as well as demonstrations of vehicular applications.
The funding request is to run from 2009 – 2014, in the amounts below :
- basic research $50 million per year (static and vehicular)
- applied research $80 million per year (static and vehicular)
- vehicle energy storage demonstration $30 million per year
This amounts to $800 million dollars of total funding.
From this link you can read the whole bill (LINK)
If you wish to write your representative about your voting requests on this bill, go here: (LINK)
This entry was posted on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 8:44 am and is filed under Financial, Politics, Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Oct 20th, 2007 (9:50 am)Woohoo!
Contact your representatives people- let’s help get this bill passed!
Oct 20th, 2007 (10:06 am)P.S.
Follow Lyle’s link and if you’re short on time, just copy and paste this into the “contact” form (don’t forget to put your name at the end):
I am writing today to ask you to support bill H.R. 3776, the Energy Storage Technology Advancement Act of 2007. I feel strongly that research into battery technology will help us to become less dependant on foreign oil and help slow global warming.
Please do all that you can to support this bill.
Thank You.
Sincerely,
[your name]
Oct 20th, 2007 (10:35 am)Drake and Lyle,
I just do the same on the Eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean, I hope the EU Parliement will follow as they have done for fuel cells.
Thanks.
Oct 20th, 2007 (11:11 am)Done and done.
Thanks Drake!
Oct 20th, 2007 (11:30 am)I’m fearful this will never go through considering our Prez just vetoed a bill to provide health care to poor children. We better have a 2/3 majority in the House and the Senate or it’s doomed.
Oct 20th, 2007 (12:36 pm)Submitted my message to my representative. Recommend that we pass this on to others that may not normally visit this web site.
Oct 20th, 2007 (1:01 pm)Sent to my congressman. Thanks Drake for the starter text. It was helpful.
Oct 20th, 2007 (3:17 pm)This will never go through…we all know that every politician in power is a part time employee of Exxon…
Oct 20th, 2007 (4:02 pm)Thanks Lyle and Drake,
I send it to my congress man also.
Oct 20th, 2007 (4:43 pm)All, you may find this reading relevant to the topic:
http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/CorporateDocuments/EPRI_Journal/2006-Spring/1013289_storage.pdf
I hope any big government money would not be merely thrown at corporations with no strings attached. A lot of progress could be made with larger funding of already competent and non-profit research organizations like the Electric Power Research Institute.
Oct 20th, 2007 (5:34 pm)Another waste of taxpayer money. There’s only one conceivable thing to be improved – battery packs, which has nothing much to do with “plug-in research” whatever in th eworld that means. Are they going to hire people to watch GM design and build their plug-in and take notes?
If you have a good battery, ANYBODY cn build a damn plug-in. if you don’t have one, then NOBODY can build a good plug-in.
The same thing goes for an electric-only car. Pretty simple, huh? Remember when Congress spent billions trying to force an automakers to build an electric, and only afterwards thought about the deficiencies of batteries? Of course, if they had instead spent the money to develop a battery back then they could not possibly hacve succeeded : the technology needed to make an advanced battery simply wasn’t there yet. Everything about the prospects of electric cars can be summed up in one single word : batteries.
Oct 20th, 2007 (7:39 pm)One has to wonder if CAFE hadn’t been set so high at 35mpg if we’d even be seeing these vehicles.
Oct 20th, 2007 (7:52 pm)Won’t CAFE be met just be making the batteries better? It seems to me that if the batteries had better storage, then CAFE would be met by default. Though, I really hate the idea of making the gas engine meet CAFE. That is such a stupid approach.
Oct 20th, 2007 (9:06 pm)Why not create a bill giving SERIOUS tax credits to people (and businesses) who purchase EVs? Something like what is being offered to people who purchase and install solar panels.
Let’s not expect anything really worth while coming out of Washington or especially the White House where BigOil controls so much power.
No one in government will take EVs, or even plug in Hybrids, serious all the oil is gone or the oceans have risen 10 feet. Of course we can start electing people who see the light.
Oct 21st, 2007 (7:27 am)Lyle – thanks again for this excellent and meaningful site.
Oct 26th, 2007 (4:29 pm)By the way, H.R. 3776 passed the House unanimously. The bill now awaits action in the Senate.
Oct 26th, 2007 (4:29 pm)Hey Lyle, I really respect your effort to try to get people motivated about contacting their representatives. I know you must be aware of the energy bill on the floor right now that is aiming to raise fuel efficiency standards to 35 mpg by 2020 and increase (significantly) the use of renewable energy sources. So many people are unaware of the benefits that there changes can make not only to the environment but to the economy as well. I am working with a coalition that is also urging people to petition their representatives to keep the standards as they are and not lower them because of pressure from auto lobbyist. I could sincerely use your help getting the word out. The petition is available here: http://www.energybill2007.org. Thanks Lyle! And keep up this amazing blog!
Oct 28th, 2007 (12:40 pm)it is a sad commentary on life when we can’t seem to get this electric concept off the ground. More freebies? more money from congress and elsewhere? let’s stop that and move into the next century. Surely, big oil is getting in the way and electric concept cars are waiting to tajke advantage of the “need’ to keep their prices high and profit margins wide, but can’t we get moving on this before the earth really puts it’s foot down and emissions destroy us all?
Nov 3rd, 2007 (7:09 am)[...] We have previously reported on a bill that was introduced to House of Representatives on 10/16/07, called the Energy Storage Technology Advancement Act of 2007. The bill among other things included $150 million over 5 years for demonstration of vehicle energy storage systems, i.e advanced lithium-ion batteries for plug-in cars (prior post). [...]