While it is much less than the $550 million that the Obama Administration originally wanted, a recently passed amendment adds $80 million to the budget of the ARPA-E, the Department of Energy’s blue-sky research branch that focuses on paradigm-shifting energy research. The vote was a narrow 214-213. This amendment ups the total budget to $180 million for the ARPA-E in 2012. Decided by a margin of 212-210, another vote also gives the Department of Energy $10 million to boost its solar energy research. Thirty-three Republicans and 197 Democrats helped pass the amendment that gives the project a budget of $173 million.

Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, the longest-serving woman in the U.S. House of Representatives, was one of the people who supported the budget increases. The Democratic representative’s deputy chief of staff Nathan Facey said, “There is a small majority in the House that continues to support these programs.” While some amendments in the House of Representatives looked to cut the budgets of renewable energy programs, fossil fuel research and energy efficiency research, they all failed. Many amendments suggesting increasing the budgets for the programs failed as well, but Facey called the successful solar energy amendment a “vote of confidence in the program.” At this point, many feel the worst these programs have to fear are flat budgets for next year if they don’t get the benefits of the high budgets requested by the Obama Administration.

The appropriations committee had proposed a $163 million budget for the solar research program. That figure would have meant a cut of $97 million, which would have been far below the $433 million suggested by the Obama Administration for 2011. However, the Democratic-controlled Senate, which is next to take up the legislation, is likely to keep supporting increases in the budgets for energy research programs such as the ARPA-E in the future.