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.
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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.