
Department of Energy Turns 30, But There’s Little to Celebrate
Date: Sunday, October 14, 2007 @ 23:19:51 UTC Topic: General
This
week, the Department of Energy (DOE) is celebrating its 30th
anniversary. I hope they hold it down. There is not much to cheer
about. When creation of the department was first bruited, the United
States was importing 30 percent of its oil needs. Now it imports 60
percent. Keep the champagne on ice. Over the course of its history, DOE
has spent hundreds of billions of dollars with little to show for it.
If, as President Jimmy Carter envisioned upon creating the department,
it was supposed to improve energy supplies, it has failed absolutely.
I
believe, but do not know, that DOE has succeeded in the stewardship and
renewal of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile. While the genius of
the national labs is uncontested, so is the duplication of their effort
and their own bulwarks against reform. Do we need so many of them? Is
something learned by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in
Golden, Colorado, studying hybrid vehicles, when they are being studied
in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at the National Transportation Laboratory? And
why is government investing in technologies that are established in the
market? - Source Via KeelyNet.com News
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