Opinion: Butterfield: NREL’s history of fickle funding

DailyCamera
By Anne B. Butterfield
Sunday, April 12, 2009

Announcing $1.2 billion of stimulus funding last month, Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu said that leadership in science is “vital to America’s prosperity, energy security, and global competitiveness.”

Dr. Chu’s aims are timely and focused, but let’s pause to look at some details because when we run billions through an out-sized federal bureaucracy, such as the Department of Energy, there is always a chance for error.

And we have little room for error in light of our nation’s dire situation. Late last year the International Energy Administration announced that they project an annual nine-percent decline in output from existing oil fields — that could be offset only a bit by hundreds of billions of sustained, annual investment in drilling capacity.

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