Climate Change in the US Government Budget – Funding for Technology and Other Programmes, and Implications for EU-US Relations

In this new Policy Brief, US Congressional and Presidential actions on several recent budgets are examined for the four principal areas of the budget affecting climate change: technology, science, international and tax credits, with a special emphasis on energy technology. The author finds several major differences in Presidential and Congressional approaches to funding climate change programmes, providing further evidence that the Presidential-Congressional divide on climate policy is continuing to widen. There is an emerging bi-partisan Congressional coalition in favour of increased spending on a wide range of climate change programmes. This shift will affect EU-US relations on climate change issues for the remainder of the current administration until 2008, and beyond as well.