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What’s Ahead
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| House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) speaks at an August press conference on the environmental impacts of pollution from power plants. (Image credit – House Oversight Committee) |
Lawmakers to Grill Oil Execs on Climate Disinformation
The CEOs of ExxonMobil, BP America, and Chevron, and the president of Shell Oil Company are appearing before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday to answer questions about the oil industry’s support for efforts to sow doubt about climate science. Last month, the committee requested documents from the companies in tandem with the launch of an investigation into the subject. Studies by scholars and journalists have previously uncovered that oil companies were a major funding source for organizations that have run public relations campaigns against mainstream climate science and backed scientists who argue consensus findings are in error. The Oversight Committee last visited the subject in 2019, in the wake of a major journalistic investigation into Exxon’s internal scientific research on climate. The Office of the New York State Attorney General previously obtained documents from the company in association with an unsuccessful lawsuit that alleged it misled investors by failing to disclose climate-related risks that company executives well understood. Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission is pressing businesses to be more forthcoming about climate risks, and activist shareholders are pushing oil companies to mitigate their carbon emissions.
Democrats Push to Finalize Special Spending Bills
Democrats reportedly may reach agreement this week on a slimmed-down version of the $3.5 trillion partisan spending package the House developed in September through Congress’ budget reconciliation process. In addition, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has set an Oct. 31 target for voting on the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure spending bill, which stalled in the House after progressive Democrats insisted an agreement be reached on the partisan package first. Few details have emerged on what science programs may be pared back or dropped from the new version of the partisan package, which is primarily focused on social programs and climate change mitigation and is now expected to have a price tag between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. One exception is that funds for establishing an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health have reportedly been removed due to procedural issues. Meanwhile, backers of the Senate’s U.S. Innovation and Competition Act are pushing for the House to act on the legislation, which includes $52 billion in funding for semiconductor manufacturing subsidies and R&D. Some lawmakers have also raised the idea of passing the semiconductor funding through a different legislative vehicle, such as a standalone bill or the National Defense Authorization Act.
NIST Detailing Plans for Reactor Restart, Climate Science
The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s primary advisory committee is meeting on Tuesday to hear updates on agency activities, including efforts to recover from a radiation incident that has kept its research reactor offline since Feb. 3. Earlier this month, the agency sent a report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission tracing the incident to mistakes made during a routine refueling operation by its staff, which has suffered from a loss of experience following several years of increased turnover. According to slides that will be presented at the meeting, NIST now estimates the earliest the reactor can restart is April 2022, contingent on NRC approval. The reactor, which supports nearly half of all U.S.-based neutron scattering research, is then scheduled to begin another extended shutdown in early 2023 to accommodate a long-expected upgrade project. Also on this week’s meeting agenda, the committee will hear from several NIST offices about the agency’s climate research portfolio, which spans greenhouse gas monitoring and measurements, energy efficiency technologies, carbon capture and sequestration, and disaster-resilient infrastructure.
OSTP Offering Update on Research Security Guidance
On Friday, the National Science, Technology, and Security Roundtable is holding a meeting to hear an update on a presidential policy known as NSPM-33, which sets minimum standards for research security policies across federal agencies. Among the speakers is Linda Lourie, who is leading the development of implementation guidance for NSPM-33 in her role as assistant director for research and technology security at the White House Office and Science and Technology Policy. Lourie joined the office in June from the Department of Defense, where she served in roles including general counsel of the Defense Innovation Unit and associate general counsel for acquisition and logistics. In August, OSTP Director Eric Lander announced that within 90 days the office would issue implementation guidance for NSPM-33 focused on three areas: disclosure policy, oversight and enforcement of disclosure policies, and the requirement from NSPM-33 that research organizations receiving more than $50 million annually in federal R&D funds maintain research security programs. Also speaking at this Friday’s meeting are Rebecca Keiser, chief of research security strategy and policy at the National Science Foundation, and Mike Lauer, deputy director for extramural research at the National Institutes of Health.
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In Case You Missed It
Senate Appropriators Release Remaining Spending Proposals
Senate appropriators finished releasing their fiscal year 2022 spending bills and accompanying committee reports last week. Similar to counterpart legislation passed by the House earlier this year, their proposals would provide significant boosts across science programs, including double-digit percentage increases for the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and National Institute of Standards and Technology, among other agencies. Nonetheless, final budget outcomes remain clouded, as Congress still needs to iron out differences between the bills and reach an agreement on overall federal spending limits for the year to avoid a Republican filibuster in the Senate. Under a stopgap measure Congress passed in September, Federal science funding has been frozen near its fiscal year 2021 level since the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.
The Senate and House both support the Biden administration’s proposal to create a technology-focused directorate within the National Science Foundation, with the Senate directing NSF to allocate up to the requested level of $865 million for its first year. In addition, the Senate’s bill for the National Institutes of Health would provide $2.4 billion to establish an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, just under the $3 billion proposed by the House but well below the $6.5 billion the administration proposed. Among the major differences between the proposals, Senate appropriators seek to increase funding for early-stage defense R&D, whereas the House and administration have proposed cuts. Conversely, proposed increases on the Senate side for the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy and U.S. Geological Survey are considerably smaller than the ones proposed in the House. Detailed figures from the Senate and House proposals are available in FYI’s Federal Science Budget Tracker.
GAO and CRS Highlight Expansion of S&T Policy Staff
At a House hearing last week, the heads of the Government Accountability Office and Congressional Research Service testified on their efforts to address lawmakers’ interest in bolstering the advice they receive on science and technology issues. CRS Director Mary Mazanec reported that CRS has created 12 new positions focused on S&T policy, while Comptroller General Gene Dodaro noted that the Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) team created by GAO in 2019 has nearly doubled in size to 120 staff members. Dodaro’s testimony also details the range of the STAA team’s analytic products, the most recent of which is an assessment of quantum technologies. GAO’s efforts have dampened a push by some lawmakers to revive Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment, which had around 150 staff members when it was defunded in 1995. Reports accompanying House and Senate appropriations legislation for fiscal year 2022 applaud actions by GAO and CRS to expand their S&T expertise as an alternative to Congress reviving OTA. During the hearing, Dodaro also criticized a proposal to import the OTA model into STAA and give the team more independence from GAO, remarking, “To take an old model and put it in an otherwise well-functioning organization, it reminds me of the Hippocratic Oath: ‘First, do no harm.’”
DOE Nuclear Technology Contracting Scrutinized by House Panel
At a hearing last week, the House Science Committee called attention to four technology demonstration contracts that the Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy has awarded on a non-competitive basis, with an expected cost to DOE of nearly $2 billion. Most of the funding under scrutiny is for efforts by the company NuScale to demonstrate a small modular reactor technology. The office’s current acting head Katy Huff testified that DOE followed appropriate procedures in awarding the contracts. Committee members did not suggest improprieties were involved, but did raise concerns that non-competitive contracts carry heightened risks. In a written statement, Committee Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) observed that aspects of the contracts resemble those used for demonstrations backed by DOE’s fossil energy office, and noted that only one of nine carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) projects it supported over the last 15 years was actually built, and that even that project is no longer operating. Johnson indicated a forthcoming Government Accountability Office report cites DOE contracting and project management as factors underlying that poor record. DOE is currently ramping up a multibillion-dollar Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program and it could rapidly expand its technology demonstration portfolio in CCUS and other energy technology areas if Congress’ bipartisan infrastructure spending bill is enacted.
US Charts Strategic Risks of Climate Change Before COP26
Just ahead of the upcoming U.N. COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the White House released analyses of the national security and strategic risks of climate change prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. The ODNI report represents the first national intelligence estimate on the subject and forecasts risks through 2040, such as increased conflicts over water resources, changing migration patterns, and the prospect of unilateral geoengineering efforts. At a press briefing, a senior administration official stated, “This is coming at a time when we are just a mere two weeks away from the U.S. attending and participating in the climate conference in Glasgow, known as COP26 ... it’s a really pivotal moment to underscore how the U.S. is thinking about climate security, its risks, and how we’re responding to many of those.” President Biden will attend the conference along with 13 cabinet members and top officials, including the heads of the Department of Energy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency.
PCAST Members Mull Prospects of Fusion Energy
Last week, at the second meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, members considered strategies for meeting the Biden administration’s goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. by 2050. Presenting on the potential contribution of fusion energy, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory physicist Richard Hawryluk discussed the recent National Academies study he chaired on pathways to building an operational pilot fusion power plant before 2040. Some members expressed skepticism about whether fusion energy can be developed in time to contribute to decarbonization targets. For instance, physicist Laura Greene pointed to “serious fundamental physics questions” surrounding whether net energy can be generated. Former defense secretary and physicist Ash Carter said the study committee had a “very odd charge” in that it was not asked to assess the trade-offs of developing a fusion plant versus pursuing other decarbonization methods. Meanwhile, President Biden’s science adviser Eric Lander noted that some in industry are claiming commercial fusion reactors could be ready by 2030. “Is the National Academies committee overly pessimistic? Are the people from industry overly optimistic? … Suppose it was a national priority to have a vibrant commercial fusion industry by the 2030s, not the 2050s. What would you do? Could you do it? Or is this incompressible?” he asked. Hawryluk replied that the first step is to form national teams to flesh out different reactor concepts and technology roadmaps, saying, “As a result of that, some of the concepts may be able to be accelerated faster than when we said; it may also be, as we really dig into it, people will realize that if you want to do all of these things, and in particular demonstrate reliability of operation, it will take a bit longer.”
Astronomers Press to Constrain Satellite Constellations
A group of U.S. astronomy associations released a report this month that summarizes policy options for reducing the impacts of light pollution from satellite megaconstellations. Among them, the report suggests policymakers “must end” the satellite industry’s current lack of review under the National Environmental Policy Act, making the case for the sky to be considered part of the environment. More broadly, the report argues that space is a “global commons” and that changes to the night sky can have widespread ecological and cultural impacts. Accordingly, it urges decision-makers and satellite operators to engage with historically marginalized groups, particularly Indigenous communities, and asserts that coordinated international regulation of the satellite industry is necessary. Arguing that scientific efforts to address growing satellite constellations have been “poorly funded and do not scale effectively,” the report also recommends creating a “SatHub” that would provide data on satellite orbits, software tools, and training and collaboration resources. In addition, it endorses the International Astronomical Union’s proposal to establish a Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference. The recommendations were developed by working groups organized through the SATCON2 workshop held this summer, building on outputs of the SATCON1 workshop held in 2020. (The workshops were co-organized by the American Astronomical Society, an AIP Member Society.)
NASA to Fund Gamma-Ray Telescope
NASA announced last week that its next small-scale astrophysics mission will be a telescope that will observe low-energy gamma rays to study star death and the formation of chemical elements in the Milky Way. Called the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), the telescope is expected to launch in 2025 and to cost $145 million, excluding launch costs. COSI is led by a team at the University of California, Berkeley and was selected from four concepts that were previously winnowed down from 18 proposals submitted to the Astrophysics Division’s Explorers program. Another small-scale astrophysics mission, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, is scheduled to launch on Dec. 9.
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Events This Week Monday, October 25
Tuesday, October 26
Wednesday, October 27
Thursday, October 28
Friday, October 29
Sunday, October 31
Monday, November 1
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Opportunities CSET Seeking Research Fellows
The Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University is accepting applications to fill several roles across its organization, including research fellows and senior fellows in selected areas. These include applications of artificial intelligence, supply chains for key national security technologies, technology diplomacy, and China’s science and technology ecosystem.
New Emerging Technologies Fellowship Seeks Applicants
The Lincoln Network is accepting applications for its inaugural Fellowship on Advancing Critical Emerging Technologies, which will support three fellows to spend January 10, 2022 to December 30, 2022 in Washington, D.C. Fellows will work to “translate academic ideas to actionable policies that advance American innovation,” focusing on “policy questions arising from escalating U.S.–China competition in key technology areas (e.g. artificial intelligence, industrial supply chain, telecommunications, quantum computing).” Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the positions are filled.
‘Progress Studies Accelerator’ Seeks Proposals
The Day One Project and the Institute for Progress are hosting a six-week “Progress Studies Policy Accelerator” that will help individuals craft actionable policy proposals for reshaping public science institutions. Participants will produce proposals around 2,000 to 4,000 words in length. No policy experience is necessary to apply, and applications are due Oct. 28.
Know of an upcoming science policy event either inside or outside the Beltway? Email us at fyi@aip.org.
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