DOE Budget Lifts Renewables, Cuts Nuclear and Coal

Actions speak louder than words. Earlier I had suspicions that our Secretary of Energy was giving just a little too much love to the coal industry. Perhaps, I am not a savvy enough politician to recognize lip service when I see it. Now since then I've learned, from people like Dr. Kutscher at NREL, that it is unwise to take anything off the table, including carbon capture and sequestration or nuclear, because the reality is that after permits and legal wrangling a new nuclear plant won't be up and running for about 10-15 years from today. In addition, carbon capture and sequestration technology is 10 years away. However, renewable energies like concentrated solar power (CSP) and photovoltaics (PV), solar thermal, and wind are ready to be implemented today on homes and on land throughout this country (remember we need just 2% of the land mass in the San Luis Valley, Colorado for CSP plants to generate all of Colorado's electricity needs!). They are clean and the energy source is free for the foreseeable future (who knows what the price of coal will be in ten years?) And what's the most important thing we can do to reduce all of our demand-side energy consumption while we try to get these supply-side energy sources online? Weatherize our homes to make them more energy efficient (I just had an energy audit on mine this week!).

Well, now we see that the Secretary of Energy is gradually shifting money to renewable energy in next year's Department of Energy budget. The momentum is shifting. We can do this with some education and some effort. Are you on board?