The goal of the MGI is to support the creation of new computational tools, software and methods for materials characterization, plus foster the creation of open standards and databases that would make the development of advanced materials occur faster, with less expense and more predictability.

Because of the far-reaching impact the MGI will have on the materials science and engineering community — and the professional societies that support this work — ACerS’ Senior Editor Eileen De Guire interviewed a representative of the Obama administration, Cyrus Wadia, to discuss the administration’s vision of the MGI effort. Wadia is the assistant director for Clean Energy & Materials R&D in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in Washington, DC.

This interview was conducted Oct. 17, 2011, at the Materials Science & Technology 2011 Conference in Columbus, Ohio.

Video length: 6 minutes.

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Credit: DOE

As Eileen notes in her post, the DOE has updated its assessment of factors affecting the availability of critical materials for energy applications, particularly in regard to rare earth elements. To give readers a quick sense of what has changed in a year, I put together comparisons of the criticality charts in the 2010 and 2011 reports.

The above chart, as indicated, demonstrates how the short-term risk evaluations are evolving. In brief, the short term concerns have increased in regard to europium and terbium, and they now join dysprosium as being in the most important/highest risk sector, while the importance of yttrium has been elevated.

Likewise, the graphic below shows the medium-term risks are shifting, but little has changed in what elements are considered to be critical (in red).

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The Department of Energy recently released its second “Critical Materials Strategy” report. Credit: DOE.

In late December 2011, the Department of Energy released its 2011 update (pdf) to its report, “Critical Materials Strategy.” This is an update to the inaugural issue report released in 2010.

The 189-page report evaluates the issues relevant to critical materials for wind turbines, photovoltaic thin films, electric vehicles and energy efficient lighting in terms of criticality, market dynamics and technology. The report looks at the rare earth elements that are most used in energy technology and also other elements, such as lithium (see graphic).

Here are the highlights adapted from the executive summary.

Criticality Assessment
Sixteen elements were assessed for criticality in wind turbines, EVs, PV cells and fluorescent lighting. The methodology used was adapted from one developed by the National Academy of Sciences. The criticality assessment was framed in two dimensions: importance to clean energy and supply risk. Five rare earth elements — dysprosium, terbium, europium, neodymium and yttrium — were found to be critical in the short term (present-2015). These five REEs are used in magnets for wind turbines and electric vehicles or phosphors in energy-efficient lighting. Other elements-cerium, indium, lanthanum and tellurium — were found to be near-critical. Between the short term and the medium term (2015-2025), the importance to clean energy and supply risk shift for some materials.

Market Dynamics
In the past year, the prices of many of the elements assessed in this report have been highly volatile, in some cases increasing tenfold. This Strategy includes a chapter exploring market dynamics related to rare earth metals and other materials [including growing demand and slow response from global suppliers, university activities, business reactions to price volatility and material scarcity and roles for government.

Technology Analyses
Building on the 2010 Critical Materials Strategy, this report features three in-depth technology analyses.

Rare earth elements play an important role in petroleum refining, but the sector’s vulnerability to rare earth supply disruptions is limited. Lanthanum is used in fluid catalytic cracking, an important part of petroleum refining. However, lanthanum supplies are less critical than some other rare earths and refineries have some ability to adjust input amounts. Recent lanthanum price increases have likely added less than a penny to the price of gasoline.

Manufacturers of wind power and electric vehicle technologies are pursuing strategies to respond to possible rare-earth shortages. Permanent magnets containing neodymium and dysprosium are used in wind turbine generators and electric vehicle motors. Manufacturers of both technologies are currently making decisions on future system design, trading off the performance benefits of neodymium and dysprosium against vulnerability to potential supply shortages. For example, wind turbine manufacturers are deciding among gear-driven, hybrid and direct-drive systems, with varying levels of rare earth content. Some EV manufacturers are pursuing rare-earth-free induction motors or switched reluctance motors as alternatives to PM motors.

As lighting energy efficiency standards are implemented globally, heavy rare earths used in lighting phosphors may be in short supply. In the US, two sets of lighting energy efficiency standards that come into effect in 2012 will likely increase demand for fluorescent lamps containing phosphors made with europium, terbium and yttrium. The first set of standards applies to general service bulbs. The second set of standards applies to linear fluorescent lamps. The projected increase in US demand for CFLs and efficient LFLs corresponds to a projected increase in global CFL demand, suggesting upward price pressures for rare earth phosphors in the 2012-2014 timeframe, when europium, terbium and yttrium will be in short supply. In the future, light-emitting diodes (which are highly efficient and have much lower rare earth content) are expected to play a growing role in the market, reducing the pressure on rare earth supplies.

The executive summary also outlines DOE’s strategy, which is three-fold: diversify global supply chains (systemic risk management), develop substitute materials and improve recycling/reuse. The strategy was developed through a series of DOE workshops held between Nov. 2010 and Oct. 2011.

The six appendices provide much of the specifics, such as detailed evaluations for each element, market share data for each energy technology, congressional legislation, joint governmental international conference information, DOE funding activities and REE use in refineries.

The report appears to be well organized and comprehensive. The addition of subheadings to the table of contents would have been helpful for navigating quickly through the document.

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A general representation of how federal spending breaks down into categories. Credit: Congressional Budget Office.

We’ve been following the FY12 budget process and its favorable outcome for the science R&D community.

The Budget Control Act was signed into law last August and deficit reductions were required in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. The graphic above from the Congressional Budget Office shows the distribution of spending categories in 2010. Presumably, 2011 and 2012 are similar.

A joint bipartisan committee, nicknamed the supercommittee, was formed last fall and tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. Its failure to do so by the Nov. 23, 2011 deadline automatically triggers $1.2 trillion in cuts starting in FY13 that will be split evenly between defense and non-defense programs, and will apply equally to mandatory and discretionary spending programs. The tortuous process that led to the agreement is summarized in this timeline put together by the New York Times.

So, why did science R&D funding fare relatively well in this year’s federal budget? In a recent Science article (Jan. 6, 2012), Jeffrey Mervis suggests three reasons.

First, he says, the country needs R&D to stay economically competitive. The steady mantra coming out of federal agencies has been innovation. Examples include NSF’s Innovation Corps, the Materials Genome Initiative and all of ARPA-E. In the article, Mervis quotes Barry Toiv of the Association of American Universities, who says, “The fact that we did all right suggests that legislators understand the importance of a strong research enterprise to the nation’s long-term economic health and that the government has a unique role to play.”

Second, the amounts are relatively small and the topic is politically safe. On this point Mervis talked to Joel Widder, who used to run NSF’s legislative affairs office and is now a lobbyist for the Oldaker Law Group in Washington, DC. Widder points out that increasing an agency’s R&D budget by a few percent does not have much impact on the massive federal deficit. The NSF is a good example. Its FY12 budget increased $165 million, while the most recent monthly budget report from the CBO estimated the federal deficit for Oct.-Dec. 2011 at $320 billion. And, there is little political risk. Mervis quotes Widder, “Nobody gets criticized for being a supporter of science.”

Third, federal funding for science is decentralized. R&D budgets are funded agency-by-agency. Each agency gains some natural protection from the congressional committees that oversee it and from other constituencies. Also, decentralization creates obstacles to funding cuts: A quiver of arrows is needed rather that one big spear to throw at something like a “Department of Science.”

Mervis warns, though, that the Budget Control Act requires about $1 trillion in spending cuts starting with FY13 and going through FY 2021. He says about $35 billion per year would disappear just from nondefense programs, including science spending, which could mean cuts to R&D budgets of around 7% per year.

There are uncontrolled variables like the possibility of Congress finding a way to meet the requirements of the Budget Control Act and the surprises that are part of an election year. But, Mervis is a science optimist and closes his article with “… recent history suggests that science will survive.”

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In December, President Obama signed the 2012 budget bill, breathing life into the federal fiscal year before the continuing resolution flowed into the new calendar year. Credit: adapted from the Congressional Budget Office.

Previously, we reported that indicators were looking positive for federal R&D funding based on the “minibus” approvals Congress made in November, which covered NSF, NIST, NASA and OSTP. The agencies — the so-called innovation agencies — all saw budget increases, even if only modest. (The OSTP budget was cut severely, however OSTP is a White House office and not charged with funding research.) Now that the full budget is approved, the science R&D community has cause to be pretty happy about the outcome. Overall, most funding agencies saw increases, or at least flat budgets.

The AAAS R&D Budget and Policy program has analyzed the final budget in detail, breaking it out into manageable pieces. According to an AAAS press release, total R&D spending for FY12 is down about 1.3% ($1.9 billion) from 2011, but most of the reduction was in defense. The AAAS analysis showed that defense R&D spending is down 3.2%, while non-defense R&D is up 0.5%.

In the release, Matt Hourihan, director of the AAAS R&D Budget and Policy program, says, “It’s no doubt a tough fiscal environment, but the fact that we actually see some fairly sizeable increases in certain research areas suggests persistent support for science and innovation even now.”

In the DOD arena, the message was mixed. R&D budgets for operational systems development and classified programs were slashed 3.8% ($1.15 billion) and 7.6% ($1.33 billion), respectively, but basic science R&D (”6.1″) increased by 8.7% and applied research (”6.2″) increased 5.6%. This is welcome news for the DOD labs and their contractors, but where will that research go without operational systems research?

DOE R&D funding increased 8% overall, including an encouraging bump for ARPA-E to $275 million from $180 million in FY11. According to an article in Science (Dec. 23, 2011), legislators are impressed with ARPA-E’s approach to project reviews and have asked DOE to look into applying it more broadly.

The massive NIH $30.6 billion budget remained essentially flat with a 0.8% increase. That’s an increase of $241 million, almost the entire ARPA-E appropriation for 2012. For comparison, the FY12 budgets for NSF and the DOE Office of Science are about $7 billion and $5 billion, respectively.

The cross-agency support by Congress for R&D is a good sign, too, for the Materials Genome Initiative project. Last summer’s white paper (pdf) introducing the MGI included a request from the administration for $100 million. Because, the MGI is intentionally decentralized and managed for organic growth, there are no budget line items to point to. However, qualitatively, it looks like the agencies that have a natural role to play in the MGI — NSF, DOE and NIST — have received enough funding to advance MGI objectives.

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