42 U.S.C. § 13523 — Management plan

(a) Plan preparation: The Secretary, working with the Advisory Board created under section 13522, must prepare a management plan for researching, developing, demonstrating, and commercially applying energy technologies, consistent with the goals in section 13401. (b) Contents of plan: The plan must provide for: (1) investigating promising energy and energy-efficiency technologies identified as potentially important for national energy security; (2) developing energy and energy-efficiency technologies that could reduce vulnerability in the energy supply and limit harm to the environment, the global climate, and the economy; and (3) creating opportunities to export U.S. energy and energy-efficiency technologies to boost the nation's competitiveness. (c) Energy technology inventory and status report: As part of the plan, the Secretary, advised by the Advisory Board, must build an inventory and status report of technologies that could improve energy supply or efficiency but aren't yet fully reliable or cost-competitive commercially, though the Secretary believes more research could get them there. This covers fossil, renewable, nuclear, and conservation technologies. For each technology, the report must give: (1) an assessment of (A) how technologically mature it is, and (B) the main research and development issues, including (i) cost barriers for building, running, and maintaining it, (ii) how well it performs, and (iii) possible environmental effects; (2) a projected timeframe for when it could become commercially available — near-term, mid-term, long-term, too uncertain to say, or unlikely ever to be commercial; and (3) a projection of how cost-competitive it will be compared to alternative technologies providing the same energy service. (d) Public comment: The Secretary must publish the proposed plan for public comment for at least 90 days, then consider the comments and summarize them in the final plan. (e) Plan submission: The Secretary had to submit the first management plan to Congress within one year of October 24, 1992. After that, the Secretary must submit a revised plan every two years, timed with the President's annual budget submission to Congress.