Biden wants new national lab to study impact of climate change on ... - Science

Biden wants new national lab to study impact of climate change on disadvantaged communities | Science | AAAS

President Joe Biden is asking Congress for $35 million to begin planning a new national laboratory to study the impact of climate change on poor communities. The proposal for the lab, which would join the 17 basic science, energy, and weapons labs run by the Department of Energy, is buried in the fiscal year 2024 budget for DOE that the president submitted this spring. DOE officials did not request the money, Science has learned, and the proposal has gone largely unnoticed by the research community.

Apart from its topic, the most striking feature of the new lab would be its location. It would be built at one of the country’s 104 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which were founded to provide opportunities for Black people barred from attending most U.S. institutions of higher education because of their race.

“Establishing a national lab at an HBCU is a top priority for the Department of Energy and for the Biden administration as a whole,” says a senior White House official who spoke with Science on the condition of anonymity. Approximately 30% of all Black scientists and engineers are HBCU graduates, yet these institutions rank far down the list of U.S. universities receiving federal research dollars.

In recent years, Congress has ordered the Department of Defense to increase the research capacity of the nation’s HBCUs through various mechanisms, most recently by limiting competition for a new DOD university-affiliated research center to a dozen eligible HBCUs. No other agency has such explicit authority to hold such a restricted competition, although DOE and several other agencies run competitive programs that give small grants to HBCUs and other institutions serving large numbers of minority students.

Over more than 8 decades, DOE’s network of national laboratories has taken on monumental technical challenges, from the development of the atomic bomb during World War II to pursuing laser fusion as a potential future energy source. With annual budgets that can top $2 billion, the labs are typically operated by a private contractor under renewable contracts from the government.

The new lab would tackle problems facing “disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution,” the White House official said. That effort would also further the administration’s Justice40 initiative, which seeks to funnel “40 percent of the overall benefits of certain Federal investments” to those distressed communities.

Current global climate models don’t provide enough spatial resolution to allow local policymakers to come up with plans tailored to the needs of their constituents, says Harvard University physicist Cherry Murray, a former head of DOE’s basic science shop, which manages 10 of the national labs. “Coming up with community-scale climate models is a huge challenge,” Murray says. “Nobody knows how to do that now.” It’s especially challenging in heterogeneous urban environments.

But Murray worries it may be too much to ask of a lab that would be starting from scratch and run by an institution that historically has received relatively little federal funding. “Building up the necessary computing capacity is going to be very expensive,” Murray notes. “And then you also need to have the administrative expertise to manage a national lab.” She would prefer to see DOE make it easier for HBCU faculty to tap into the extensive facilities and large scientific teams already in place at an existing national lab.

The president’s budget request doesn’t flesh out how the $35 million would be spent. “We realize it’s not sufficient to build a full lab,” the White House official says. “But it’s meant to start the planning process and figure out the best opportunities going forward.”

Should Congress approve the requested funding, the next step would likely be a series of community workshops on what such a lab could look like. DOE would then solicit proposals from institutions deemed eligible to build and operate the lab.

“But that’s all speculation at this point,” says Geraldine Richmond, DOE’s undersecretary for science and technology. “We’re just at the start of the budget process.”