WALKER WISCONSIN BUDGET CUTS BIOFUELS SUPPORT

Scott Walker wants to end funding for renewable energy program

Thomas Content and Lee Berquist, February 28, 2015 (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s proposed budget cuts $8.1 million in funding over two years for University of Wisconsin faculty at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center. The center develops technologies to convert Wisconsin’s plentiful wood chips, corn stalks, and native grasses to biogas and biofuels. The research facility was built in 2009 with a five year, $125 million U.S. Department of Energy grant, which was renewed in 2013. State funds of $104 million and gifts and grants of $50 million contributed. The Walker cut represents matching funds necessary to keep the federal funding. The Governor’s office said the cut, separate from Walker’s proposal to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system over the next two years, is part of his plan to provide UW with block grants and push funding decisions onto university administrators. The failure to provide matching funds to keep the center’s federal funding is expected to compromise the $25 million in federal funding for broader UW energy-development research such as the Wisconsin Energy Institute, which gets 90% of its funding from the bioenergy program. click here for more

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