Congress Wants DOE Reformed, Restructured, or Replaced

[Spare_change]

Andrew Follett on December 26, 2016

Congressional lawmakers want incoming President-elect Donald Trump to reform the Department of Energy (DOE) to make it more responsive and efficient.

North Dakota Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer, who serves on the Committee on Natural Resources and Committee on Science and Technology, sent a letter to Trump’s transition team outlining how the DOE could be reformed and modernized.

Cramer’s proposals include funding DOE research programs by results instead of technology type, diverting money from wind and solar subsidies into basic research, focus on exporting energy and reorganizing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the DOE.

Congressional lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are outraged by recent behavior by DOE officials — who withheld information from Congress to advance President Barack Obama’s global warming plans, an investigation concluded. The investigation found that agency officials fired an employee for honestly answering Congressional staff’s questions. This has led to a debate over how to reform the agency and what its mission should be.

“The mission of the Department is to provide science and technology solutions for energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges, but only 37% of the DOE’s roughly $30 billion budget is designated for science and energy programs,” states the letter. “Consequently, advocates for reform argue the DOE should focus on its core mission: energy innovation. For example, carbon capture and utilization technology solutions are critical to revitalizing coal and other fossil fuel related jobs.”

Cramer thinks the DOE should spend research budgets by outcomes, which would give the agency greater flexibility to set big goals as well as allowing it to redirect funding to where it makes the most sense. The Department of Energy plans to spend $8.5 billion next year on global warming-related research next year, which is roughly comparable to the amount it spends on energy innovation.

Cramer also wants Trump to reorganize the EPA under the DOE, as that agency has also attempted to dodge congressional oversight. The agency would be rolled into the DOE, potentially saving billions of dollars and improving governmental efficiency.

“Moving the EPA to DOE makes sense from a policy perspective since the combined agency would host both relevant regulatory and technology functions,” states the report. “Merged with strategic energy policy and technology considerations, U.S. environmental policy making would become more rational and less influenced by environmental special interests like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Sierra Club.”

Finally, the DOE should lift restrictions on energy exports, according to Cramer’s letter, as industry groups are already moving in this direction.

Across the U.S., five new liquid natural gas export terminals, capable of exporting 10 billion feet per day, are under construction. When finished, these terminals will make the U.S. one of the world’s largest exporters of natural gas. Selling gas to Europe would have minimal costs and huge economic benefits, according to a DOE study, but environmentalists have repeatedly blocked permits for terminals.

Exporting natural gas is likely to be a growth industry, as global demand for natural gas is expected to be 50 percent higher by 2035 than it is now, according to the International Energy Agency.

 

[Wry Catcher]

And the beat goes on...

Who will benefit from this scheme?

The Plutocrats are in control of the beltway. Can the rape and pillage of the earth be far behind?

 

[ABikerSailor]

Hey, with Perry at the helm of the DOE, it's not gonna last very long.

 

[william the wie]

good riddance to bad trash for the DOE

 

[Old Rocks]

Andrew Follett on December 26, 2016

Congressional lawmakers want incoming President-elect Donald Trump to reform the Department of Energy (DOE) to make it more responsive and efficient.

North Dakota Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer, who serves on the Committee on Natural Resources and Committee on Science and Technology, sent a letter to Trump’s transition team outlining how the DOE could be reformed and modernized.

Cramer’s proposals include funding DOE research programs by results instead of technology type, diverting money from wind and solar subsidies into basic research, focus on exporting energy and reorganizing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the DOE.

Congressional lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are outraged by recent behavior by DOE officials — who withheld information from Congress to advance President Barack Obama’s global warming plans, an investigation concluded. The investigation found that agency officials fired an employee for honestly answering Congressional staff’s questions. This has led to a debate over how to reform the agency and what its mission should be.

“The mission of the Department is to provide science and technology solutions for energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges, but only 37% of the DOE’s roughly $30 billion budget is designated for science and energy programs,” states the letter. “Consequently, advocates for reform argue the DOE should focus on its core mission: energy innovation. For example, carbon capture and utilization technology solutions are critical to revitalizing coal and other fossil fuel related jobs.”

Cramer thinks the DOE should spend research budgets by outcomes, which would give the agency greater flexibility to set big goals as well as allowing it to redirect funding to where it makes the most sense. The Department of Energy plans to spend $8.5 billion next year on global warming-related research next year, which is roughly comparable to the amount it spends on energy innovation.

Cramer also wants Trump to reorganize the EPA under the DOE, as that agency has also attempted to dodge congressional oversight. The agency would be rolled into the DOE, potentially saving billions of dollars and improving governmental efficiency.

“Moving the EPA to DOE makes sense from a policy perspective since the combined agency would host both relevant regulatory and technology functions,” states the report. “Merged with strategic energy policy and technology considerations, U.S. environmental policy making would become more rational and less influenced by environmental special interests like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Sierra Club.”

Finally, the DOE should lift restrictions on energy exports, according to Cramer’s letter, as industry groups are already moving in this direction.

Across the U.S., five new liquid natural gas export terminals, capable of exporting 10 billion feet per day, are under construction. When finished, these terminals will make the U.S. one of the world’s largest exporters of natural gas. Selling gas to Europe would have minimal costs and huge economic benefits, according to a DOE study, but environmentalists have repeatedly blocked permits for terminals.

Exporting natural gas is likely to be a growth industry, as global demand for natural gas is expected to be 50 percent higher by 2035 than it is now, according to the International Energy Agency.

Now that wind and solar are both cheaper than any other forms of electrical generation, and the grid scale batteries can make them 24/7. the fossil fuel lobbies are desperate to stop the installation of these technologies, no matter what it costs the American Citizen.

 

[william the wie]

With high-tech turbines maybe but those are not in use in the US. If you think Gallium Arsenide solar cells are anything but a toxic spill waiting to happen you need your head examined lithium batteries are tons of fun too just read upon the Galaxy 7 disaster.

 

[Spare_change]

Andrew Follett on December 26, 2016

Congressional lawmakers want incoming President-elect Donald Trump to reform the Department of Energy (DOE) to make it more responsive and efficient.

North Dakota Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer, who serves on the Committee on Natural Resources and Committee on Science and Technology, sent a letter to Trump’s transition team outlining how the DOE could be reformed and modernized.

Cramer’s proposals include funding DOE research programs by results instead of technology type, diverting money from wind and solar subsidies into basic research, focus on exporting energy and reorganizing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the DOE.

Congressional lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are outraged by recent behavior by DOE officials — who withheld information from Congress to advance President Barack Obama’s global warming plans, an investigation concluded. The investigation found that agency officials fired an employee for honestly answering Congressional staff’s questions. This has led to a debate over how to reform the agency and what its mission should be.

“The mission of the Department is to provide science and technology solutions for energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges, but only 37% of the DOE’s roughly $30 billion budget is designated for science and energy programs,” states the letter. “Consequently, advocates for reform argue the DOE should focus on its core mission: energy innovation. For example, carbon capture and utilization technology solutions are critical to revitalizing coal and other fossil fuel related jobs.”

Cramer thinks the DOE should spend research budgets by outcomes, which would give the agency greater flexibility to set big goals as well as allowing it to redirect funding to where it makes the most sense. The Department of Energy plans to spend $8.5 billion next year on global warming-related research next year, which is roughly comparable to the amount it spends on energy innovation.

Cramer also wants Trump to reorganize the EPA under the DOE, as that agency has also attempted to dodge congressional oversight. The agency would be rolled into the DOE, potentially saving billions of dollars and improving governmental efficiency.

“Moving the EPA to DOE makes sense from a policy perspective since the combined agency would host both relevant regulatory and technology functions,” states the report. “Merged with strategic energy policy and technology considerations, U.S. environmental policy making would become more rational and less influenced by environmental special interests like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Sierra Club.”

Finally, the DOE should lift restrictions on energy exports, according to Cramer’s letter, as industry groups are already moving in this direction.

Across the U.S., five new liquid natural gas export terminals, capable of exporting 10 billion feet per day, are under construction. When finished, these terminals will make the U.S. one of the world’s largest exporters of natural gas. Selling gas to Europe would have minimal costs and huge economic benefits, according to a DOE study, but environmentalists have repeatedly blocked permits for terminals.

Exporting natural gas is likely to be a growth industry, as global demand for natural gas is expected to be 50 percent higher by 2035 than it is now, according to the International Energy Agency.

Now that wind and solar are both cheaper than any other forms of electrical generation, and the grid scale batteries can make them 24/7. the fossil fuel lobbies are desperate to stop the installation of these technologies, no matter what it costs the American Citizen.

That's not exactly true ... please don't mislead people.

Wind energy is the cheapest renewable energy, but it requires government subsidies to actually be less than fossil fuels. Solar energy isn't even in the same ball park, even with government subsidies.

I would assume, like many, you were misled by the news stories that claimed renewables were cheaper because the DROP in cost was greater than that for fossil fuels.

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

How about eliminated?

 

[Spare_change]

How about eliminated?

Sounds reasonable to me .... make it so, Mr Sulu.

 

[william the wie]

The problem is not the economics of energy but rather the inability to see the downsides of all of the alternatives. I realized that the AGW nonsense was most certainly crap when I found out that its advocates were anti-nuke. They are also opposed to solar power in orbit servicing customers by MASER to antennas, Water turbines in the Gulf Stream which will most certainly restore polar ice in the Arctic Ocean and save Europe from warming, or any other thing but dumb-ass stunt technology.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Hey, with Perry at the helm of the DOE, it's not gonna last very long.

I don't know, a boss who can't keep three items in his brain and needs a list is likely easily marginalized by a competent staff, especially those who hold their appointed leader to be an undeserving clown. And yet, the obsequious and personally ambitious few may provide a redoubt for Perry.

The question Is: Is Perry bright enough to have understood the warning, "beware of the ides of March"?

 

[Wry Catcher]

good riddance to bad trash for the DOE

Yeah man, let's go back in time, let's burn our forests, coal * oil for heat and energy, both are known to be clean sources and plentiful. Why waster our time and money on other pie in the sky plans of the foolish, wind, solar, geothermal, etc., when we know Oil, Coal and timber created the industrial revolution, and the great wealth for the Robber Barons which trickled down to all of us.

 

[Old Rocks]

Emerging markets are leapfrogging the developed world thanks to cheap panels.
by
Tom Randall
December 14, 2016, 10:00 PM PST December 14, 2016, 10:04 PM PST
A transformation is happening in global energy markets that’s worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity.

This has happened in isolated projects in the past: an especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs. But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging markets are costing less to build than wind projects, according to fresh data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The chart below shows the average cost of new wind and solar from 58 emerging-market economies, including China, India, and Brazil. While solar was bound to fall below wind eventually, given its steeper price declines, few predicted it would happen this soon.

World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That's Cheaper Than Wind

Wind and solar, unsubsidized, are both competative with gas and coal. For nations with no infrastructure, cheaper because no rail lines or pipelines needed. And that is what the future looks like. With grid scale batteries, they are both 24/7. Coal is dead, natural gas will last a bit longer.

 

[Old Rocks]

Once a rolling grassland, northeastern Wyoming is now pockmarked with big holes. The Powder River Basin, as the region is known, is home to several of the country’s largest coal mines—giant terraced expanses of exposed earth and rock, much of it dug on federal land. The blasting and scraping altered more than the surface of the landscape: It’s also cut into aquifers, letting water leach away. Still, coal companies have promisedthey’ll leave the land better than they found it.

But as Big Coal collapses, landowners and environmental groups are questioning whether they have enough money to keep that promise, which is also a matter of law, as federal regulation requires companies to restore the land they’ve mined. Alpha Natural Resources and Arch Coal, which operates the basin’s second-largest surface mine, have filed for bankruptcy. Together the two producers have about $900 million of clean up work to do in Wyoming. Peabody, the world’s largest coal corporation, is expected to go the same way soon after its stock fell to just over $2 a share, from a record high of $1,300 in 2008. Peabody’s reclamation obligations total $1.4 billion, including about $800 million in Wyoming.


The problem in Wyoming is that the state allowed coal companies to “self-bond” their clean-up responsibilities. Essentially, companies told regulators they had enough money to reclaim their mines, and in turn regulators made a bet that the companies were right, and didn’t require them to pay a third party to ensure that costs would be covered. It’s a kind of subsidy, really, that reduced the financial burden on coal producers (who are heavily subsidized in other ways, too, for mining in the PRB) by 78 cents per ton of coal, according to one report. The problem isn’t unique to Wyoming: Peabody self-bonds its reclamation in Colorado, New Mexico, Illinois, and Indiana, too.

Big Coal Is Bankrupt. Who Will Pay to Clean Up Its Mess?

Once again big corporations have succeeded in privatizing the profits, and socializing the costs. This is what the orange clown and his cabinet of incompetents have planned for us.