Our corrupt oligarch has bigly plans for clean energy. Chris Mooney has the story at the Washington Post.
The Trump administration is expected to propose massive cuts to federal government research on wind and solar energy next week, according to current and former Energy Department officials familiar with budget discussions.
The department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), which funds research on advanced vehicles as well as other aspects of clean energy, would face a roughly 70 percent cut in 2018, carving about $ 1.45 billion from its $2.09 billion 2017 budget.
Among the largest victims of this bludgeoning of DOE’s clean energy budget will be the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.
The proposed cuts, if enacted, would reverberate dramatically at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., which has a $ 292 million federal budget and 2,200 employees. This research center — the incubator for the solar cell technology used by the U.S. firm First Solar — is highly dependent on research funding from EERE.
The consequences of the proposed cuts could be wide ranging, potentially undermining the office’s SunShot Initiative, which has worked to drive down the costs of large-scale solar energy, which now runs about 7 cents per kilowatt hour. A goal of reaching 3 cents per kilowatt hour for large-scale solar electricity had been set for 2030.
Meanwhile, they are celebrating in China, which has big plans for solar energy. Here is a small taste from the world’s leader in installed solar generation capacity.
Public sector investment
China will plow 2.5 trillion yuan ($361 billion) into renewable power generation by 2020, the country's energy agency said on Thursday, as the world's largest energy market continues to shift away from dirty coal power towards cleaner fuels.
The investment will create over 13 million jobs in the sector, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said in a blueprint document that lays out its plan to develop the nation's energy sector during the five-year 2016 to 2020 period.
Reuters (1/05/2017)
Private sector investment
China's wind and solar sectors could attract as much as 5.4 trillion yuan ($782 billion) in investment between 2016 and 2030 as the country tries to meet its renewable energy targets, according to a research report published on Tuesday.
China has pledged to increase non-fossil fuel energy to at least 20 percent of total consumption by the end of the next decade, up from 12 percent in 2015, part of its efforts to tackle air pollution and bring carbon dioxide emissions to a peak by around 2030.
Reuters (4/11/2017)
Since it is Friday, let me leave you with a few ironies.
1. The formal announcement to cripple federal solar research and development at the DOE will come while Lord Trump will be partying with the Saudi Royal family, signing a massive arms deal for defense contractors, and even dinning with war criminal. Toby Keith will even give a males-only concert.
2. Team Trump is fighting tooth-and-nail to open Chinese markets to U.S. solar-grade polysilicon, a critical raw material for solar panels. Ramping up domestic production will create one or two hundred new jobs (but pay no attention to the thousands and thousands of high wage tech jobs likely to be lost at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and potentially throughout the U.S. solar industry).
3. A Stanford economic study funded by the DOE on what the U.S. needs to do to remain a world leader in solar innovation and deployment was published in March. Team Trump is doing the exact opposite of every single recommendation.
4. Rick Perry took time out from his busy schedule giving speeches on everything but energy to commission a “hastily developed” study regurgitating Koch-funded talking points about how wind energy destabilizes the electric grid. Even Chuck Grassley called bullshit.
The stupid burns. Or more accurately, the world burns as Trump fiddles.