Funding Highlights from Energy’s FY 2024 Budget Request

Another year’s budget request released, and the Department of Energy is seeking $52B in discretionary funding, an increase of $6B from FY 2023 enacted levels. The budget targets funding increases for top DOE priorities, including bolstering nuclear security at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), spurring clean energy-related initiatives, and strengthening the department’s stance in cybersecurity among its systems as well as nuclear and energy infrastructure.  While the department breaks out its discretionary funding numbers by appropriation, DOE provides a clean-cut view of the budget breakdown among organizations:

Note: funding is rounded

Source: Department of Energy

Nuclear Security

NNSA requests $23.8B in FY 2024, a $1.7B increase over FY 2023 and the largest request in NNSA history. That total is largely dispersed among the Weapons Activities ($18.8B), Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation ($2.5B), and Naval Reactors ($2.0B) funds. Increased funding aims to address new threats to U.S. nuclear infrastructure, as well as provide nuclear propulsion systems for current and future naval fleets. Additional funding highlights centered on nuclear security at NNSA include:

• NNSA IT and Cyber fund total of $578M, an additional $134M request over FY 2023 to redesign the DOE IT and cyber landscape with capacities such as unified communication, agile cloud infrastructure and next-generation collaboration services
  • NNSA’s IT and Cyber fund plans to also incorporate IT applications, operational technology and AI/ML to help secure NNSA operations
• Continued implementation and operation of NNSA’s first exascale computing system, El-Capitan, for unclassified program use in late 2023

Clean Energy

According to OMB, Energy is requesting nearly $11.9B in climate and clean energy research, development, demonstration and deployment, a 20% increase above FY 2023. Additional funding highlights in clean energy include:

• DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) request for $3.8B in FY 2024 to stimulate innovation in clean energy technologies
  • The budget provides $35M under EERE to stand up an 18th national laboratory at a Historically Black College and University, Tribal College and University, or Minority Serving Institution
• Investments of nearly $2B to support clean energy workforce and infrastructure projects such as:
  • $425M to weatherize and retrofit low-income American homes
  • $107M for the Grid Deployment Office to support utilities at State and local government buildings
  • $83M to electrify tribal homes and transition tribal academia building to renewable energy

Cybersecurity:

DOE’s cyber funding addresses the growing and evolving physical and cyber threats to U.S. energy and nuclear infrastructure and seeks to fortify its information systems. Funding highlights in cyber include:

• DOE Office of Cybersecurity, Energy, Security and Emergency Response (CESER) request of $245M in FY 2024, a $45M increase above FY 2023. The request includes $135M for risk management tools and technologies, $39M for preparedness, policy and risk analysis, and $39M for response and restoration for the nation’s energy infrastructure
• While the NNSA cyber and IT fund was discussed in conjunction with one another above, the NNSA requests $315M solely for cyber initiatives within the agency, a $100M increase over FY 2023. Increased funding will support FY 2024 cyber priorities at NNSA including:
  •  Transitioning to zero trust architecture, including investment in technologies such as multifactor authentication
  • Recruiting and retaining cyber staff across NNSA
  • Enhancing real-time monitoring capabilities
  • Implementing endpoint detection and response (EDR) across all NNSA network infrastructure
  • Automation in cyber capabilities such as EDR
  • Inventory and categorize NNSA’s operational technologies and prioritize risk mitigations.
  • Establishing a red and blue team cyber capability at NNSA
  • Expanding NNSA’s center of excellence for threat intelligence in other DOE elements and build threat hunting teams

Other:

Other funding highlights include:

• Office of Science historic funding request for $8.8B, $690M above FY 2023, towards innovative research at the national laboratories and scientific facilities in climate change and other innovative technology areas such as:
  • Advanced Computing ($67M)
  • AI/ML ($167M)
  • Exascale Computing ($14M)
  • Quantum Information Science ($280M)

DOE IT Budget Request

According to data from the IT dashboard, Energy’s FY 2024 IT budget totals $3.3B, a $29M increase over FY 2023, revealing minimal change in the department’s IT budget. Notably, some DOE cyber-related investments saw increases, in conjunction with priorities set forth by discretionary budget figures:

• IM IT Security and Compliance, $179M (+$3M)
• SC Office of Science IT Security and Compliance, $84M (+$2M)
• NNSA LANL M&O IT Security and Compliance, $19M (+905K)

Top IT investments with the largest increases include:

• NNSA LANL M&O End User, $154M (+$7M)
• IM IT Management, $91M (+$7M)
• IM IT Services End User Support, $47M (+$6M)

Top IT investments with the largest decreases include:

• SC Office of Science M&O Applications, $51M (-$32M)
• NNSA SNL M&O IT Security and Compliance, $35M (-$15M)
• NNSA SNL M&O Applications, $32M (-$6M)

For more analysis on the FY 2024 budget request, refer to Deltek’s new report FY 2024 Federal Budget Request: Priorities and Opportunities.