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diversify U.S. sources of energy supply in a manner which fosters free market choices. Renewable energy can be an important part of the nation's energy supply mix and renewable technologies are already making important contributions to national, regional, and local energy requirements. These contributions are possible since the family of renewable energy technologies spans a wide range of resource and technical options at varying stages of maturity. Some technology and resource combinations have been providing substantial energy for many years, others are just beginning to enter the supply system, and some remain in research phases.

Renewable energy technical development overall has been paralleled by an increasing level of confidence in and commitment to these technologies by the private sector. The renewable industry has made significant progress in recent years to its development into the diverse group of many small businesses and sizable divisions of large companies that we see today. There has also been progress with respect to the other institutions concerned with renewable energy supply and use. States have become increasingly involved with promoting renewable energy use, while universities, research institutes, and utilities are promoting awareness and conducting programs to further advance our knowledge of renewable energy potential.

Within the current Federal budget limitations, it is the Department's objective and role to participate in the highest priority research to address the most critical technology base issues. The focus of such efforts will be on those technologies with the greatest long-term promise for contribution to the nation's energy supply mix. These efforts will emphasize precompetitive research critical to advancing technology while avoiding interference with the

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extraordinary capacity of industry to develop specific commercial products and services. The Department will continue to encourage private sector participation and leadership and will seek input from industry and other institutions in the selection of projects which have the greatest relevance and potential.

The request for FY 1987 of $108.1 million will allow the Department to perform the activities that reflect the nation's commitment to continued development of renewable energy resources, thereby increasing the nation's energy supply options, and, subsequently, national energy security.

I would now like to address the funding requests for selected major programs.

Solar Buildings

Solar buildings technologies have continued to make inroads in housing and, to a lesser degree, in the commercial buildings sector. These technologies can presently supply up to 40% of the energy required to heat individual homes across the United States. There is increasing scientific evidence that such energy contributions could be doubled and extended to additional types of building requirements for energy supply by means of continued opportunity for technological innovations. The FY 1987 Solar Buildings Technology Program budget request of $4.7 million for operating expenses will provide industry with an essential technology base for developing the new materials, components, and technologies required to realize this potential.

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Working closely with industry and university laboratories, the Solar Buildings Program is conducting long-term, cross-cutting research which the diverse sectors of the industry cannot support. The goal of these research activities is to increase the energy contribution of solar technologies to the point where 70% to 80% of space heating, hot water, cooling, and lighting requirements of various types of buildings could be supplied at costs that are competitive with conventional fuels.

The FY 1987 program in materials and components includes continued research on new optical and thermal switching films which control solar gain and thermal losses for windows and exterior building surfaces. Research on innovative collectors will increase their thermal efficiencies and reliability, decrease their cost, and expand the application of active solar technologies to cooling systems and other building energy requirements.

New phase change materials incorporated in such conventional building materials as wallboards will make it possible to store and use thermal energy provided by solar energy in all parts of the building. Advanced thermal transport concepts will enable energy to be transferred from the point of collection at the building exterior to any interior location, thereby improving the energy performance of solar building systems.

Systems research activities encompass both residential and non-residential building applications. Research on open cycle solar absorption and solar desiccant cooling technologies will be aimed at increasing their energy efficiencies, the key to achieving viable solar cooling applications. An important element of the FY 1987 systems research program is the development

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of analytical tools to allow architects and engineers to predict system performance. Researchers will also continue to monitor, analyze, and evaluate the performance and reliability of solar building technology. Analysis techniques are being developed for integrating these solar technologies with conventional heating and cooling systems.

Photovoltaics

Photovoltaics (PV) is on its way to becoming a significant energy supply option. The partnership between DOE and industry has resulted to date

in rising conversion efficiencies, increasing reliability, and lower costs, all of which have helped the technology to establish a strong foothold in the competitive energy market, with a broad range of viable applications. In FY 1987 the Photovoltaic Program, with a budget request of $19.6 million for operating expenses and $1.0 million for capital expenses, will seek to advance the basic understanding of technical issues associated with materials formation and physical phenomena of the PV cell.

Amorphous silicon is an attractive thin-film photovoltaic material which could establish PV technology as a broadly competitive electric power production option. U.S. research leads worldwide efforts in addressing the issues leading to the optimization of single junction submodules and the investigation of higher efficiency multijunction concepts. The efforts will lay the ground work for a viable industrial effort capable of achieving 10 percent efficiency single junction and 13 percent multiple junction large area submodules.

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Polycrystalline thin films also represent promising candidates for meeting the major programmatic criteria relating to cell efficiency, material processing requirements, and performance stability. Progress has been made in the development of low cost deposition methods, and in cell efficiency. FY 1987 efforts will concentrate on defining the scientific and technological barriers to approaching theoretical efficiency and on the development of large area film fabrication concepts for the most promising of these materials.

As a result of DOE's program, single-crystal gallium arsenide and singlecrystal silicon solar cells currently hold records for the most efficient photovoltaic conversion of sunlight to electricity. But the efficiency of such materials is inherently limited because not all incident sunlight can be utilized due to the frequency selectivity of the specific materials involved. To overcome this difficulty, researchers are exploring concepts that will include seeking improvements in selected single-junction cells as well as studying concepts to mechanically or optically couple cells or to fabricate, as one structure, two or more cells of different materials. The goal of this high priority effort in high efficiency concepts is to achieve 35% efficient small area cells for use by industry as part of its development effort.

The FY 1987 program will also maintain its unique capability for precise measurement of material and cell parameters. This work at SERI guides researchers throughout the U.S. in understanding and correlating observed physical phenomena. The program will also support other fundamental research in quarternary and ternary compounds, and promote basic material work at universities. Finally, the wealth of information gathered by the program from materials to systems during its ten years of research and development will be