Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Feeling rejected? Need funding for your Unobtainium free energy device? Nobody taking your Alcubierre rotary warp bubble electricity generator seriously? Uncle Joe’s “Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations” might be the solution to your problems.
DOE Establishes New Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
DECEMBER 21, 2021
DOE Will Oversee $20 Billion Federal Investment to Stand Up Clean Energy Projects Across the U.S. to Reach President Biden’s Net-Zero Goals
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced the establishment of the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, a new DOE office that will help deliver on President Biden’s bold climate agenda, create new, good-paying jobs for American families and workers, and reduce pollution while benefitting disadvantaged communities.
President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides more than $20 billion to establish the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and support clean energy technology demonstration projects in areas including clean hydrogen, carbon capture, grid-scale energy storage, small modular reactors, and more. Demonstration projects prove the effectiveness of innovative technologies in real-world conditions at scale in order to pave the way towards widespread adoption and deployment. The founding of this office represents a new chapter that builds on DOE’s long-standing position as the premier international driver for clean energy research and development, expanding DOE’s scope to fill a critical innovation gap on the path to net-zero emissions by 2050.
“Thanks to the investments Congress made in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations will move clean energy technologies out of the lab and into local and regional economies across the country, proving the value of technologies that can deliver for communities, businesses, and markets,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “This new office will hire the best and brightest talent to invest in cutting edge clean energy projects, and DOE is calling on anyone dedicated to addressing the climate crisis to roll up their sleeves and join us.”
“This new Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations reflects President Biden’s commitment to help Americans turn on the lights in their homes, drive to work, and power their businesses using clean, affordable, and sustainable energy. This office will make life easier and safer for Americans all across the country,” said Mitch Landrieu, White House Senior Advisor and Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator.
This investment in the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations is part of the $62 billion in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that will supercharge DOE’s work on clean energy demonstrations to deliver cutting edge clean technologies to communities and businesses across the country. These demonstrations will fund projects totaling hundreds of millions or multiple billions of dollars in scale and will unlock massive follow-on investment from the private sector to deploy these technologies, delivering clean energy and creating good-paying jobs in communities across the country.
The office’s programs also include billions of dollars to invest in demonstration projects in rural areas and economically hard-hit communities – a critical focus of President Biden’s Justice40 initiative aimed at delivering 40% of clean energy investment benefits to disadvantaged communities and those that are experiencing the first and worst impacts of climate change. The office will consistently engage environmental justice groups, labor, and communities to help shape program development and execution. In addition to the large-scale projects, DOE will continue to support many smaller-scale pilots and demonstrations that are needed to meet the Administration’s climate goals.
Visit energy.gov/careers and follow us on LinkedIn to keep an eye out for current and future opportunities and start your career at DOE.
Source: https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-establishes-new-office-clean-energy-demonstrations-under-bipartisan-infrastructure-law
On the positive side, at least someone in the Biden administration has admitted the existence of the renewable energy “critical Innovation gap” which needs filling. So it seems a shame the Biden administration has not taken this thought to its logical conclusion, and suspended the rollout of renewable installations based on current technology, technology which cannot possibly deliver value for money.
SMR’s are in the list, but no fusion AFAIK. There are a few private outfits badly needing a Manhattan Program approach. LPPFusion clearly makes the point.
https://lppfusion.com/investing-in-lppfusion/
Oh dear, hydrogen boron fusion. Many times more difficult than DT.
Much more difficult than these, yes : h/t gringojay :
Not for weak-kneed!
Actually, look at their videos and read up on them.
They are really close. a-netronic fusion is a pretty interesting concept.
But when you actually look at where they are, they are down to material science, they just need to control Anode erosion from what I can see. Otherwise imagine 100% scalable, on-demand energy.
They need a Manhattan style crash program, like the other FIA members such as Helion and more. We would still have no fission without Manhattan.
Many attempts to green such an approach, such as Solyndra, Enron… have run their course at enormous cost. Greening might just have run out of pavement….
Once again, Bonobo, you have established your paper-thin knowledge about the stuff you pontificate about. Fission did not come out of the Manhattan project. Fission was known and it was precisely this knowledge that made scientists like Einstein speculate that an atomic weapon could be constructed.
We already have fusion weapons and despite many decades of investment and billions of dollars we’re far away from making fusion power.
Moping around again, eh?
It is a looong step from Dr. Lise Meitner’s discovery to Hanford and the first Chicago pile.
And as Ivy Mike showed, fusion was not fully understood – they got quite a surprise.
And Dr. Lerner says clearly nuclear physics is still phenomenological.
Despite this, Manhattan, a classic Government credit project like the TVA and Apollo, got results in record time.
von Hayek et al believe in the magic of the markets, spontaneous emergent, unknowable economics, of a feudal non-nuclear, non-electrical, non-space travel time – step aside ye knights of olde!
No, the big surprise wasn’t Ivy Mike, which was a liquid deuterium device. it was Castle Bravo, the first dry, lithium deuteride fueled device that gave them the shock and showed that their theory about natural lithium deuteride being essentially inert, was wrong
https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Castle.html
You clearly don’t know your history, Bonobo. The Chicago Pile, the first nuclear reactor, was not started as a part of the Manhattan project, it was taken over by the Manhattan project. It took just over a year to complete at a very low cost. It did not require a massive government project to get done. Why? A sustained fission chain reaction is easy. They did it with some uranium and a big pile of graphite blocks. We’ve already invested far more than a Manhattan project of funds in Fusion and 10 times as much time yet commercial Fusion is nowhere near a reality.
The Chicago Pile was a Manhattan Project project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgical_Laboratory
What have you been smoking? Unknowable economics?
If you look at the reaction it is not exactly textbook fusion :
One Boron-11 plus a proton creates Carbon-12 and 3 Helium-2 atoms?
Somebody just created 6 protons out of thin air.
Thought a little more about it. The chart could be saying that the Carbon-12 fissions into 3 Helium-2 ions. I which case 6 protons just disappeared into thin air.
In either case, the chart is either desperately incomplete, or utterly nonsensical.
Edit: Crimany, it was only 15 minutes later, and the edit clock had already expired?
It appears that the 6 neutrons from boron 11 first are conserved in C12 and then in 3 helium ions (2 neutrons each in helium). Not saying it works other than mass conservation seems to be OK.
The company’s videos are of much higher quality than those of Rossi and Mills (scammers). However, there are numerous similarities between Lerner (founder and CEO) and them.
The drawing of a reactor feeding hundreds of homes through what appears to be a line not much bigger than an extension cord is fanciful, and what are the odds that a leader of the Columbia University student strike in 1968 and participant in the 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement could succeed at developing something like this?
As the author of The Big Bang Never Happened, he shows how to harness the actual fusion processes. Detailed scoreboard of the BB’s failed predictions at the site. Nucleosynthesis in detail. Tons of physics. Other approaches such as the Tokomak, Spheromak … are also in play.
The new math of Free Energy
Neither free-energy, nor free-markets.
The graphic could have been better at describing the reaction, the 12C nucleus splits into three 4He nuclei. Not sure if this reaction occurs in reality, but seems plausible in that the 12C nucleus may not be able to radiate away the energy from the (11B,1H) reaction. This would be similar to the (D,D) reaction producing either T,p or 3He,n.
https://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk
Took me a while to find it LPP stands for:
“Lawrenceville Plasma Physics” Fusion Inc.
The text mentions nuclear technologies, but they funding is the wrong order of magnitude to actually do any pilots of nuclear energy.
Nuclear energy costs in the US and most of Europe are wildly inflated by the regulatory environment. For example, there is a categorical requirement for every plant to employ a militia to prevent terrorists from sneaking into the reactor and stealing fuel rods.
Making the plants smaller doesn’t make the regulations any less insane or less expensive.
Sure regulatory shenanigans are a drag, but fusion is not easy!
This is just a $20 billion slush fund for more government jobs and cronies to siphon from. Think Solyndra.
My immediate and exact thought. It’s completely unnecessary.
On no, you’re wrong. The whole program is necessary to fill the pockets of friends, contributors, and relatives. I’d not expect anything useful from an energy perspective, but there’s tons of money to be had.
How many Biden paintings will be bought to decorate the new offices?
They should somehow squeeze another Democratic mega-project, California high-speed train to nowhere, into it.
I’ve witnessed DOE technology projects firsthand. Each technology or sector is assigned project managers who soon become cheerleaders, irrespective of ultimate viability. Vying for finite funds, they develop websites and news releases explaining how this new technology is just so close to being a game-changer. Just a few more dollars and a few more years and we’ll be there.
Of course, science and technology does progress somewhat in that way. A thousand ideas are tossed onto the trash heap of history for every one that makes it. However, unlike venture capital and corporate R&D, where people and corporations risk their own money, federal project managers have no skin in the game, playing with other people’s money.
Since wind and solar are already deployed at utility scale and have proven to be uneconomical and unreliable, propped up by subsidies, tax credits and renewable portfolio standards, list for us a sampler of the new and innovative energy technologies that are just around the bend. Don’t go spending this new money on old technologies.
It’s not quite true that federal project managers have no skin in the game.
The difference is that for them that “skin” is their job. If the project shuts down, they lose theirs. On the other hand, the bigger the project gets, the bigger their own salary gets. So they have every incentive to do everything in their power to sell the project, regardless of whether they actually believe it will ever work.
Therein lies the fundamental problem with any sort of socialism and why they all fail.
Their project failing OFTEN does not mean they lose their jobs. They just bid on and get a similar open slot elsewhere in the swamp.
I thought, constitutionally speaking, the legislature had to come up with this crap and then the executive would then sign off on this legislation. How is it that king Biden can just make this stuff up himself?
Just now comes news that Biden is under pressure to Executive order, to get around Manchin. Looks like, not sure, it will be a line item thing.
Biden has given up on fighting Covid today and left it to the states…do you think he starts a war?
Think of all the bribes/kickbacks in that money. Solyndra.
Reforming the Environmental Impact procedure, which I understand to be mostly governed by Carter era executive orders, would be a good step. Much of the cost of building nuclear is in the delays and uncertainty caused by endless appeals.
If the people actually running the “Biden administration” actually cared, a sort of “Nixon goes to China” rejection of the nihilist faction of the green blob would be the only reasonable step.
Tom Halla: “If the people actually running the “Biden administration” actually cared, […]”
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They don’t. They’re in on it.
But you knew that, thus the ‘if’ at the beginning of your sentence.
As long as I live, I will never understand how any of these people look in the mirror— this crap is right out of 1984. I’d shoot myself rather than have anything to do with this shite.
Vomitrocious.
Thanks, John. I’ve never before seen “Vomitrocious”. I like it.
Regards,
Bob
Even better word is Sh**t
It has several distinct meanings
Shit is that what happens when your attention is diverted.
Shite is nasty and brown and trickles down your legs
Shoite is the verbal nonsense that is copiously spouted in vomitrocius manner by Brandon and his buddies
Go Jo! Yer mooth’s a’ broon as they say in Glasgow
I can definitely smell shite.
He’s a wee toley……
John, these sorts of actions are the proximate cause of my leaving Federal work after 11 years at a fairly high level. As I rose in the ranks, it became much more obvious that it wasn’t “public service,” but “grab what you can and devil take the hindmost.”
Give us a few bob, mate…
Only $20billion. Brandon must be going senile. Surely he means $20trillion.
$20Billion can be funded from the President’s slush fund. For $20Trillion he would have to go to congress.
Marc Carney, ex Bank of England chief, now UN Climate Finance czar, is ruthlessly, relentlessly focused on $100 TRILLION. Looks like Biden is not that focused….
It is the future funding of the new, unkillable department that will be of jaw-dropping amounts, no matter the party in power.
“This new Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations reflects President Biden’s commitment to help Americans turn on the lights in their homes, drive to work, and power their businesses using clean, affordable, and sustainable energy. This office will make life easier and safer for Americans all across the country,”
This stinky BS makes one want to vomit….
“Stand Up Clean Energy Projects”
stand up? what’s with that dumb sounding phrase? perhaps that’s to have us envision wind turbines standing up 500′ all over the nation?
who talks like that? nobody I know- for me, I have a vision of Frankenstein stand up
It means they do comedy.
More like “Propped up”.
and, there’s NOTHING clean about clean energy- I hate that phrase- the greenies must be blind when they look at vast wind/solar “farms”- heck, they bitch when I as a forester manage a nice timber harvest- but it’s OK to cover the landscape with this shit- pisses me off
Agreed, Joseph! Of course, since the news release says projects must attempt to support minority and disadvantaged communities, DOE should “stand them up” in places like South Chicago, Harlem, Detroit, East LA, and all of the queer and homeless neighborhoods in U.S. cities. They already have legions of “bright and talented” unemployed people searching for these jobs.
It is just code words for directing Federal dollars to politicians’ constituent areas and crony capitalist friends. The more powerful the politician, the bigger the cut. That is why the areas in and around Washington DC are the richest in the nation.
Greens in Australia apparently up in arms when one of their pristine landscapes were destroyed for a windfarm.
I’m not sure exactly where it’s from but “stand up” is commonly used to refer to getting something going. In software development, we might say a sentence like, “we’ll need to stand up a new server”. And, I can remember in grade school painting classes being told to “stand up your easel.”
That said, the wonderful Federal government loves to use the parlance of the commoners… and ends up destroying it at the same time.
I’m a commoner and never heard that phrase- or maybe because I’ve spent half a century working deep in the forest. :-}
Maybe the smart thing to do would be to develop the technologies and implementation plan to suit that doesn’t drive up energy costs and can actually meeting power demands BEFORE legislating the $$$$$ needed?
Biden’s BBB bill is based on cocktail napkin estimates created by the beneficiaries.
Texas and Missouri attorneys general ask a federal court to require the Biden administration to immediately resume building the border wall with funds allocated by Congress, Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security announced it was using the funds on environmental projects instead.
“This office will make life easier and safer for Americans all across the country”
WTF? what idiot wrote that?
‘Easier and safer’ for the grantees and their pals.
They misspelled “Office”.
Should have been “ORIFICE”.
The only output from this Orifice looks like being energized propaganda.
Granholm pointedly stated that the program was laser focused on…..hundreds of grant projects and grantees. They sure have a low opinion of intelligence of voters and taxpayers.
I think it was P.T. Barnham that said something like “nobody ever lost money betting against the intelligence of the average American.”
“The office will consistently engage environmental justice groups, labor, and communities to help shape program development and execution.”
Oh, yuh, right- that office will REALLY listen to those folks. Sure. Because those groups know SO MUCH about energy production and they’ll all politely agree on solutions. Solutions that will save the Earth! Praise the Lord! And pass the $$$$ this way.
It would be urgent for members of FIA to apply immediately :
https://lppfusion.com/new-fusion-industry-alliance-formed-lppfusion-joins/
Many companies listed there have stand-up projects.
I actually suspect D.C. has learned something from the Solyndra and especially the Enron spectacular disasters, and the COP26 circus.
Could it be they have tried all unworkables and the gates to Fusion are opening?
NO, they just think up new twists to do the same old scam.
“Uncle Joe” Brandon recently gave Camilla Bowles Parker a “clean energy” demonstration. Was this a step forward in the Net Zero hustle?
Maybe that was his opinion?
Hey, I know a guy who’s been looking for investors in his CCS process for years and posts on WUWT regularly. I’d bet that this new funding source would be
gulliblesmart enough tofall for his scamsee the value of this technology.Can I apply? I have this extraordinary experiment with test tubes on my kitchen table. Energy in is slightly less than energy out. It works!
Try presenting it at a 15min Standup, and duck!
Quack……
I’ll believe it if alcohol is involved.
Meanwhile the few remaining western players in solar are held back by Chinese dominance with slave labor products and key components. I know, let’s give out grants to our friends in concentrating solar, geoengineering, fusion, and minority communities to ignore the loss of the last 10 percent competitive, domestic players. At least we can reward our friends in the process of wasting time and looking busy.
DoE uses stand-up.
A daily stand-up meeting is an opportunity for the project team to discuss a project’s progress at a high level. These meetings last 15 minutes and allow each contributor to report on their accomplishments since the last stand-up meeting. … In Agile project management, daily stand-up meetings are essential.
Looks like some here have no R&D experience? Not clear if Fusion can be explained in 15 minutes, but I have seen real tricky stuff done at such meetings.
Try explaining the sense behind wind turbines in 15 minutes.
The law is really named the “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act“, but when a handful of republicans, who were allowed little or no input into its contents, voted yes, it is now trumpeted as “bipartisan.”
Many of those Senate Republicans who voted for the Infrastructure bill will be out of work after the next election.
Calling all inventors of energy-for-nothing devices! Riches await you!
“Demonstrations”?? Is that the new 1984 version for “Procurements” or “Requirements”? Meanwhile, if this office has any actual plans of demonstrating how wonderful and reliable wind and solar energy can be in prominent display events to the public, they’d better make absolutely sure Al Gore is never invited to one of those.
What’s more FREE demonstrations. Pesumably with FREE demonstrators.
“to help Americans turn on the lights in their homes, drive to work, and power their businesses using clean, affordable, and sustainable energy.”
If, as and when it is available…
“One of the issues with renewable power is therefore that the more renewable infrastructure we build, the more gas (or similar) plants we have to construct in order to counter-balance.”
https://www.thegreenage.co.uk/why-is-intermittency-a-problem-for-renewable-energy/
The UK certainly isn’t building anything
The UK has active fusion programs, and SMR’s just got a boost. Will it last?
Somebody get Sid an application, I’m sure his little project will qualify.
Bill Clinton was a leader in this wave of inventing whole new programs as reward for minority vote communities and adding a “hands off” clause to keep IGs from doing audits on them. The dark side of evolution is evolutionary dirty-tricks politics.
My proposal for a Clean Energy Demonstration involves a breakthrough method of energy production combining wood ash with creosote. Full disclosure, I actually came up with this idea back in grade school, when I used to write science fiction. Creosote, I understand has now been determined to be “nasty stuff”, but be that as it may, it is required for this idea to work. As you may have guessed, the wood ash is what makes the idea green. I anxiously await my $million(s) for my demonstration.
“Demonstration” is a fine word, especially if they enforce it.
Unfortunately, they should have applied the words and the intentions more than three decades ago.
The Department of Energy already has the Office of Technology Transitions. Biden’s handlers could have accomplished the same thing by directing the agency to concentrate on clean energy but instead they bloat the Federal bureaucracy and increase the deficit. Why? Either they’re clueless or they want to convince the public (dishonestly) that they are saving humanity. Probably both.
Or perhaps they’re creating ‘jobs’ for nitwit nephews.
As have all pollies since time began.
Auto
And nieces.
Of course!
Auto
It sounds like DARPA on LSD.
“DOE office that will…… create new, good-paying jobs for American families and workers”
DOE office that will…… create new, good-paying jobs for American
families and workerscivil servants, bureaucrats, political cronies and party hacksThere, fixed that. They obviously need better proof-readers.
We need to harness the perpetual motion engine that drives the crank on the money printing press in WaDC. That thing never stops.
Either a demonstration of practical products or a relatively inexpensive containment of em-pathetic technologies.
The tech billionaires and other alarmists should invest in a Green New World theme park like DisneyWorld. They can demonstrate how life would look without fossil fuels and allow people to fully experience it. People can check in and stay for a day or a month and experience the “green life”. However, I don’t think they would be able to build it or operate it without fossil fuels much less building roads and parking lots.
“… a new DOE office that will help deliver on President Biden’s bold climate agenda, create new, good-paying jobs for American families and workers, and reduce pollution while benefitting disadvantaged communities.” Will it also soothe the ‘piles’ caused by shoving this huge waste of money up the taxpayers’ fundaments?
This is one area of research that the Chinese and Russian hackers will not bother with. It’s not going to be worth a keystroke.
In 2021 more coal was burned than ever before. Good news since I own coal company stock.
Also the third 1600 MWe EPR went critical. It will replace two BWR built about 1980.
So three new reactors replace 6 modern reactors. It will take 24 SMR that are still on paper just to replace the completed EPRs. That is just one design. South Korea and Russia are also building large LWR.
The first SMR was put in a submarine. Hundreds more have followed. A scaled up version became the fist commercial US power plant 15 years after fission was demonstrated by Enrico Fermi. This demonstration was open to the world to promote the peaceful use of the atom.
So yes, government has a roll to play in energy R&D.
What will we most likely learn from this $20 billion?
That DOE is good at spending money and not getting anything lasting done.
I already knew that.
Getting sick of the nonsense and incompetence. There is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy. Energy is energy. There are polluting processes that can produce energy in a useable form and there are technologies that we can apply to mitigate the pollution. What they mean but don’t say is that their intent is to produce energy without a net production of greenhouse gases (primarily CO2). Of course they ignore the main greenhouse gas which many energy systems produce in abundance – water vapour. And, to date, they seem to willfully ignore all of the fossil fuels burned and CO2 produced from mining, manufacturing, installing and, in the near future, decommissioning those energy systems they pretend are carbon neutral (when of course they are anything but).
The fact they never use honest plain language to describe their goals is a clear indication they are misrepresenting their intent and it seems safe to assume that their real goals are entirely self serving and likely in the form of money, power or both. Any “environmentalist” who pretends cutting down forests, converting the trees to pellets, shipping them across the ocean and then burning them in incinerators to make electricity is an environmentally friendly thing to do is an outright liar and con artist.
So no I don’t think this new office of “Clean Energy” Demonstrations is anything other than a grand theft of public resources.
Wow! At last, this new Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations may provide a means to market my excellent Perpetual Motion Machine to provide perfect clean Energy for all!
WTF are those?
It a group that keep poor people poor by protecting them from high paying jobs.
For example, LES was the Louisiana Enrichment Project. It was to be located in Louisiana but because of protests that it was in a poor black area it was not right.
The enrichment facility was eventually located in New Mexico providing jobs for poor brown people.
For the benefit of readers from other locations, some isolated places in the US west became home to nuclear weapons projects. NM, Idaho, Washington State are examples. Lots of great jobs and over time local communities became educated to the risks and benefits.
A billion dollar construction project where the workers are in clean rooms wearing white lab coats. What’s not to like?
Given that solar “farms” (or slabs) now cover 7 square miles each we can simply pave over the disadvantaged communities. Problem solved! Sarc
I am amazed at the establishment chart of the DOE.
Do the descriptors in the various boxes in the chart provide an accurate description of what their employees do?
With the establishment of the new Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (bottom of centre-left silo) one wonders how it connects with the Office of Technology Transitions (mid- point of centre right silo) ( h/t meab this thread).
And then there is the Office of Project Management Oversight and Assessments (bottom centre silo)……
And this is building infrastructure…..
As with essentially all politics, only the extremely narrow range of options that has already been decided on are likely to receive any consideration. The goal will be to fill various already obligated pockets, not to deliver value at large.
Tell Uncle Joe I’ll write code for a fee, from home, to save that excessive travel CO2.
This is merely Carter’s Synfuel project renewed. Remember how that led to the US being powered by synthetic fuel from shale? Yeah, me neither.
In the same way that Hunter Biden, the artist, can get organisations to buy his work, I’d bet he’s even now working on some perpetual motion machine that his Dad’s government will pay him handsomely for. It’s how the scams go round and round.
The shorter DOE- We’ll be slushfunding every Green whackjob with your taxes.