42 U.S.C. § 18644 — Biological and environmental research

(a) Program — As part of the Director's duties authorized under section 7139, and coordinated with the activities authorized under sections 18641 and 18642, the Director must carry out a program of research and development in biological systems science and climate and environmental science — including subsurface science — relevant to developing new energy technologies and supporting the Department's energy, environmental, and national security missions. (b) Biological systems — The Director must carry out research and development in genomic science, including fundamental research on plants and microbes, to build a systems-level understanding of complex biological systems. This may include activities: (1) to build a fundamental understanding of the biology of plants, fungi, and microbes as a basis for innovative bioenergy and bioproduct processes, enabling cost-effective, sustainable production of (A) advanced biofuels, (B) bioenergy, and (C) biobased materials; (2) to conduct foundational functional systems biology research (A) supporting expanded biosystems design research, and (B) building understanding of (i) fundamental genome structure and (ii) "phenomes" — including the functional genomics of gene products at genome scale; (3) to develop biosystems designs and synthetic biology approaches for new, nonfood, plant- and microbe-derived bioproducts, as a basis for new bioeconomy and biotechnology applications in production, resource recovery, recycling, and upcycling; (4) to better understand microbiome behavior in the environment and the interdependence between plants and microbes in a sustainable ecosystem; (5) to improve understanding of plant and microbial processes affecting the global carbon cycle, including removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and other biological processes, for sequestration, storage, and use; (6) to understand the microbiome mechanisms and microbiota that transform, immobilize, or remove contaminants from subsurface environments, and that affect how carbon, nutrients, and contaminants cycle and settle in the environment; (7) to develop computational approaches and integrated platforms for open-access collaborative science; (8) to use tools and approaches across the Office of Science to expand research into new bio-based chemicals, polymers, and inorganic materials, including research (A) advancing fungal, microbial, and plant biosystems design research to understand how CRISPR and other gene-editing tools work in nature, in the laboratory, and in practice; (B) deepening genome-enabled knowledge of the roles of microbes and microbial communities, including fungi, in (i) supporting plant and tree growth, productivity, performance, adaptation, and resilience amid changing environmental conditions, and (ii) optimizing biomass end uses; (C) developing biosystems design methods and tools to increase photosynthesis efficiency in plants; and (D) increasing the scale and pace of characterizing microbe and microbial-community functions and physical characteristics to improve biosystems design; (9) to conduct research on analysis techniques and simulation capabilities — including artificial intelligence and machine learning — on high-performance computing platforms, to speed up collaborative, reproducible systems biology research; (10) to develop and improve bioimaging, measurement, and characterization technologies, to understand the structural, spatial, and temporal relationships of metabolic processes governing how traits are expressed in plants and microbes; (11) to conduct research on translating genotype into phenotype, to develop predictive understanding of cellular function under varied environmental and bioenergy-related conditions; (12) to conduct metagenomic and metadata assembly research, sequencing, and analysis; and (13) to develop other relevant methods and processes the Director determines are appropriate. (c) Biomolecular characterization and imaging science — The Director must carry out research and development in biomolecular characterization and imaging science, including developing new, integrative imaging and analysis platforms and biosensors, to understand the expression, structure, and function of genome information within cells, and for real-time measurements in ecosystems and field sites relevant to the Department's mission. (d) Limitation for research funds — The Director may not approve new climate science-related initiatives without first determining that the work is well coordinated with related work carried out by other federal agencies. (e) Low-dose radiation research program (1) In general — The Secretary must carry out a research program on low-dose and low dose-rate radiation to (A) enhance scientific understanding of, and reduce uncertainties about, the effects of exposure to this radiation, and (B) inform improved risk-assessment and risk-management methods for it. (2) Program components — In carrying out this program, the Secretary must: (A) support and carry out the directives in section 106(b) of the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act (treated, for this subsection, as applying to low-dose and low dose-rate radiation research), coordinating with the National Science and Technology Council's Physical Science Subcommittee; (B) identify, and where possible quantify, potential monetary and health-related impacts on federal agencies, the public, industry, research communities, and other users of the research; (C) leverage the existing body of knowledge on low-dose and low dose-rate radiation research; (D) engage with other federal agencies, research communities, and potential users of the research's information, including institutions in radiation research, medical physics, radiology, health physics, and emergency response; and (E) support education and outreach activities to spread information and promote public understanding of low-dose radiation, focusing on non-emergency situations such as medical physics, space exploration, and naturally occurring radiation. (3) Research plan — (A) Not later than 90 days after December 27, 2020, the Secretary must enter into an agreement with the National Academy of Sciences to develop a long-term, strategic, prioritized research agenda for the program in paragraph (2). (B) Not later than 1 year after December 27, 2020, the Secretary must transmit that research plan to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. (4) GAO study — Not later than 3 years after December 27, 2020, the Comptroller General must transmit to those same committees a report on: (A) an evaluation of the program's activities; (B) how effectively it is coordinated and managed; and (C) whether the research plan in paragraph (3) has been carried out. (5) Definitions — (A) "Low-dose radiation" means a radiation dose of less than 100 millisieverts. (B) "Low dose-rate radiation" means a radiation dose rate of less than 5 millisieverts per hour. (6) Rule of construction — Nothing in this subsection subjects research the Secretary carries out under this program to the limitations described in section 16317(e). (7) Funding — From funds provided to the Biological and Environmental Research Program, the Secretary is authorized to make available: $20,000,000 for fiscal year 2021; $20,000,000 for fiscal year 2022; $30,000,000 for fiscal year 2023; $40,000,000 for fiscal year 2024; $40,000,000 for fiscal year 2025; $50,000,000 for fiscal year 2026; and $50,000,000 for fiscal year 2027. (f) Low-dose radiation and space radiation research program (1) In general — The Secretary, consulting with NASA's Administrator, must carry out basic research on the similarities and differences between the effects of low-dose radiation exposure on Earth, in low Earth orbit, and in the space environment. (2) Purpose — This program's purpose is to speed up breakthroughs in low-dose and low dose-rate radiation research described in subsection (e), and to help develop new tools, technologies, and advanced materials needed for long-duration space exploration. (g) Earth and environmental systems sciences activities (1) In general — As part of the activities authorized under subsection (a), and coordinated with activities under subsection (b), the Director must coordinate with NOAA, the National Science Foundation, the EPA, NASA, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, and other relevant agencies to carry out Earth and environmental systems science research, which may include activities: (A) to understand, observe, measure, and model how Earth's atmosphere and biosphere respond to changing greenhouse gas concentrations and related climate changes, including the frequency and intensity of extreme weather; (B) to understand the coupled physical, chemical, and biological processes that transform, immobilize, remove, or move carbon, nitrogen, and other energy-production-derived contaminants such as radionuclides and heavy metals, and to understand how carbon dioxide and other relevant molecules are sequestered and transformed in subsurface environments; (C) to understand, observe, and model how water, carbon, and nutrients cycle through terrestrial systems across different scales of time and space; (D) to understand the biological, biogeochemical, and physical processes across multiple scales that control the flow of environmentally relevant compounds between the land surface and the atmosphere; and (E) to understand and predict interactions between natural and human systems, to inform potential ways to mitigate or adapt to increased greenhouse gas concentrations and related climate changes. (2) Prioritization — In carrying out this program, the Director must prioritize: (A) developing software and algorithms to apply environmental-systems and extreme-weather data in climate and Earth-system prediction models on high-performance computing systems; and (B) capabilities supporting the Department's mission needs for energy and infrastructure security, resilience, and reliability. (3) Environmental systems science research — (A) As part of the activities in paragraph (1), the Director must carry out research to build an integrated, robust, scale-aware predictive understanding of environmental systems, including hydrobiogeochemistry from the subsurface to the top of the vegetative canopy, accounting for seasonal-to-interannual variability and change. (B) Clean water and watershed research — As part of the research in subparagraph (A), the Director must (i) support interdisciplinary research to significantly advance understanding of water availability, quality, and the impact of human activity and climate change on urban and rural watershed systems, including freshwater environments; (ii) consult with the Interagency Research, Development, and Demonstration Coordination Committee on the Nexus of Energy and Water for Sustainability (established under section 16183) on energy-water nexus research; (iii) engage with representatives from research and academic institutions, nonprofits, state, territorial, local, and tribal governments, and industry with relevant expertise; and (iv) coordinate with NOAA, the National Science Foundation, the EPA, NASA, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, and other relevant agencies. (C) Coordination — (i) The Director must carry out this research consistent with priorities the Secretary sets to support and speed up decontaminating relevant Department-managed facilities. (ii) The Secretary must ensure the Department's activities, including this research, are coordinated to support and speed up that decontamination. (4) Climate and Earth modeling — As part of the activities in paragraph (1), working with the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program (section 18642) and other Department programs as applicable, and coordinating with NOAA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, and other relevant agencies, the Director must carry out research to develop, evaluate, and use high-resolution regional and global climate, Earth-system, and other relevant models, to inform decisions on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dealing with the resulting effects of climate change. This modeling must include: (A) integrated capabilities for modeling multisectoral interactions, including how climate policies affect human systems and the interdependencies and risks at the energy-water-land nexus; (B) greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, energy supply and demand, and other critical elements; and (C) interactions among human and Earth systems, informed by interdisciplinary research, including economic and social sciences. (5) Midscale funding mechanism — (A) Instead of individual research grants, activities authorized under this subsection may be carried out (i) by competitively selected midscale, multi-institutional research centers; (ii) by large-scale experiments or user facilities; or (iii) through existing Department or NOAA facilities and systems. (B) The Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee must recommend to the Director which projects are best suited for these research centers. (6) Atmospheric Systems and Sciences Research Program — (A) As part of the activities in paragraph (1), the Director must carry out this program, using observations to improve understanding of atmospheric processes. Coordinating (and, as appropriate, collaborating) with NOAA and other relevant federal agencies conducting related research, the Director must research: (i) better understanding the atmosphere and its interaction with the Earth's surface; (ii) sources of uncertainty in Earth-system models, including the interdependence of clouds, atmospheric aerosols, radiation processes, and precipitation; (iii) Earth's radiative balance and hydrological cycle; (iv) demonstrating improved predictability of regional and global atmospheric models from better process-level understanding; (v) atmospheric regimes with high model uncertainty — aerosol processes, warm boundary-layer processes, convective processes, and high-latitude processes; (vi) reducing uncertainty and improving how Earth-system models simulate the atmospheric system as a whole; and (vii) understanding and modeling priority research areas, including aerosol, warm boundary-layer, convective, and high-latitude processes. (B) Activities — In carrying out this program, coordinating (and, as appropriate, collaborating) with other relevant federal agencies, the Director must: (i) collect data and conduct research to advance atmospheric and Earth-system modeling capabilities; (ii) develop or join scalable test-beds that (I) incorporate process-level understanding of aerosol, cloud, and precipitation life cycles, and (II) can be incorporated into other models; (iii) improve data, analysis, and prediction systems in marine, littoral, terrestrial, and Arctic environments — including environments sensitive to climate change — relevant to the Department's energy and science mission; and (iv) support developing technologies for (I) more accurate cloud, aerosol, and other atmospheric sensors, (II) observing sensor networks, and (III) computational predictive modeling. (C) Use of Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program facilities and infrastructure — To support this program, and coordinating (and, as appropriate, collaborating) with NOAA and other relevant federal agencies, to improve understanding of the physical and chemical processes affecting cloud and aerosol formation, life cycle, and radiative impacts, atmospheric processes, and surface or subsurface phenomena, the Director must use the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement User Facility, NOAA's Global Monitoring Laboratory, or other Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences User Facilities to: (i) support environmental scientists by collecting high-quality, well-characterized in-situ, remote-sensing, and aircraft observations of (I) cloud and atmospheric aerosol microphysical properties, (II) the coincident dynamical and thermodynamic properties of the surrounding atmosphere, (III) precipitation properties, (IV) radiation and background environment properties, and (V) surface or subsurface phenomena properties; (ii) carry out laboratory studies and ground-based and airborne field campaigns targeting specific atmospheric and surface or subsurface processes relevant to the Department's mission, across different locations and environments, including by developing technology to advance predictive capabilities; (iii) build data sets that can feed into atmospheric models; and (iv) enhance observations using modeling and simulations that test the accuracy of climate model assumptions. (h) Biological and environmental research user facilities (1) In general — The Director must carry out a program for developing, constructing, operating, and maintaining user facilities to improve collecting and analyzing observational data on complex biological, climate, and environmental systems. (2) Selection — (A) The Director selects user facilities on a competitive, merit-reviewed basis. (B) In selecting them, the Director must consider applications from National Laboratories, institutions of higher education, multi-institutional collaborations, and other appropriate entities. (3) Facility requirements — To the maximum extent practicable, these user facilities must include: (A) distributed field research and observation platforms for understanding Earth-system processes; (B) analytical techniques, instruments, and modeling resources — including high-throughput molecular phenotyping — for understanding and predicting biological and environmental systems' functional processes; (C) integrated high-throughput sequencing, advanced bioanalytic techniques, DNA design and synthesis, metabolomics, and computational analysis; and (D) any other facilities the Director considers appropriate, consistent with section 7139. (4) Existing facilities — The Director is encouraged to evaluate existing user facilities' capabilities and, to the maximum extent practicable, invest in modernizing them to address emerging research priorities. (5) Earth and environmental systems sciences user facilities — The Director must operate at least 1 user facility to advance collecting, validating, and analyzing atmospheric data, including activities (A) to advance knowledge of Earth and environmental systems and improve model accuracy, and (B) to measure how atmospheric gases, aerosols, and clouds affect Earth and environmental systems. (6) Microbial molecular phenotyping capability project — (A) The Secretary must provide for expanding the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (or its successor facility) to advance high-throughput microbial, plant, and molecular phenotyping capability, speeding up discovery of new protein functions and metabolic pathways in microbial systems. (B) In doing so, the Secretary must ensure (i) coupled high-throughput autonomous experimental and multimodal analytical capabilities, and (ii) direct integration of automated multiomics analysis, biomolecular and cellular imaging, and functional biological assays with high-throughput microbial culturing and cultivation capabilities, on timescales relevant to biological processes under natural and perturbed environmental conditions. (C) The Secretary must ensure this is integrated and coordinated with the Department's existing data platforms and user facilities. (D) Subject to available appropriations, the Secretary must begin this work not later than September 29, 2027. (E) Out of the funds authorized under subsection (k), Congress authorizes: $550,000 for fiscal year 2023; $29,000,000 for fiscal year 2024; $32,000,000 for fiscal year 2025; $30,500,000 for fiscal year 2026; and $27,500,000 for fiscal year 2027. (7) User facilities integration and collaboration program — (A) The Director must support a program of collaboration between user facilities, helping researchers more readily combine the tools, expertise, resources, and capabilities of multiple Office of Science user facilities (as described in section 7139(d)) to advance research and emerging technologies. (B) This program must advance integrating automation, robotics, computational biology, bioinformatics, biosensing, cellular platforms, and other relevant emerging technologies the Director identifies, to boost user facilities' productivity and scientific impact. (8) Coordination — In carrying out this program, the Director must ensure the Office of Science coordinates with (A) NOAA, the EPA, NASA, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, and other relevant federal agencies on collecting, validating, and analyzing atmospheric data; and (B) relevant stakeholders — including institutions of higher education, nonprofit research institutions, industry, and state, territorial, local, and tribal governments, and other appropriate entities — to ensure access to the best available atmospheric and historical weather data. (i) Terrestrial-aquatic interface research initiative (1) In general — The Director must carry out a research program to improve understanding of the terrestrial-aquatic interface. In doing so, the Director must prioritize enhancing observational data collection, and must develop models analyzing the natural and human processes that interact in littoral zones. (2) Littoral data collection system — The Director must establish an integrated system of geographically diverse field research sites, to improve scientific understanding and predictability of the major land-water interfaces of the United States through better data quantity and quality, including in (A) the Great Lakes region; (B) the Pacific coast; (C) the Atlantic coast; (D) the Arctic; (E) the Gulf coast; and (F) the coasts of U.S. territories and freely associated states. (3) Existing infrastructure — In carrying out these programs and establishing field research sites, the Secretary must leverage existing Department-supported research and development infrastructure, including the Department's existing marine and coastal research lab. (4) Coordination — For these purposes, the Secretary may enter into agreements with federal departments and agencies that have complementary capabilities, including NOAA and any other relevant federal agency as appropriate. (5) Report — Not earlier than 2 years after August 9, 2022, the Director must provide the House Committees on Science, Space, and Technology, Natural Resources, and Appropriations, and the Senate Committees on Energy and Natural Resources and Appropriations, a report examining whether the system in paragraph (2) should become a National User Facility within the Department, or a research facility within another federal agency. (6) Interoperability — (A) The Director must ensure activities under paragraphs (1) and (2) — observation, data collection, monitoring, and model development — are interoperable and, as practicable, can integrate with related existing systems at NOAA and other relevant federal agencies. (B) To support interoperability, the Director may, as practicable, make high-performance computing resources available to other federal agencies. (C) NOAA must integrate the data collected under these programs into its relevant data systems and models, as practicable. (j) Engineered ecosystems initiative (1) In general — The Secretary must establish, within the Biological and Environmental Research program, an initiative focused on developing engineered ecosystems through artificial intelligence, novel sensing capabilities, and other emerging technologies. (2) Interagency coordination — The Secretary must coordinate with the Director of the National Science Foundation, the Administrator of NOAA, the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, the Secretary of Agriculture, and other relevant officials, to avoid duplicating research and observational activities and to ensure this initiative complements activities other agencies are undertaking. (3) Report — Not later than 180 days after August 9, 2022, the Secretary must submit to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources a report on the activity authorized under this subsection. (k) Authorization of appropriations — Out of the funds authorized for the Office of Science in a fiscal year, Congress authorizes the Secretary to carry out this section's activities: $885,420,000 for fiscal year 2023; $946,745,200 for fiscal year 2024; $1,001,149,912 for fiscal year 2025; $1,068,818,907 for fiscal year 2026; and $1,129,948,041 for fiscal year 2027. (l) Definitions — (1) "Advanced biofuel" has the meaning given in title 7, section 8101. (2) "Bioenergy" means energy derived from biofuels. (3) "Biomass" has the meaning given in section 15852(b) of this title. (4) "Bioproduct" has the meaning given to "biobased product" in title 7, section 8101.