The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) focuses energy Research and Development efforts on new and promising ways to provide for our future energy needs. This document focuses on DOE's programs and projects related to the nation's Fossil Energy resources: coal, oil, natural gas and oil shale. Fossil Energy programs have grown rapidly from about $58 million in FY 1973 to the $802 million requested for FY 1979. As those programs have matured, there have been significant shifts in emphasis. For example, by FY 1979, gasification technologies will have matured sufficiently to enter the demonstration phase. Then we will have to make critical decisions as to which candidate processes to pursue and to encourage industry's active participation as early as possible. We will present the rationale for those changes and others at the beginning of each section describing a particular grouping of similar projects, e.g., coal liquefaction. We will then discuss each project and present its current status along with past and future milestones. Emphasis is on projects with early payoff potential, particularly the direct utilization of coal. However, this near-term emphasis will not overshadow the need for a stong technological base for development of longer-term promising technologies and the need …