Re<C: Wrong answer for Google
Just as I finally learned what “Re<C” means, Google is abandoning its financially unsustainable project. The acronym stands for Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal. No wonder I didn’t know what it meant. The equation is all wrong. Paul Chesser, an associate fellow for the National Legal and Policy Center, reports that Google came face to […]
Goldman Sachs CO subsidiary gets $90.6 million taxpayer loan guarantee
In the shadow of the Solyndra bankruptcy scandal, the embattled Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Guarantee Program announced on September 9, a $90.6 million loan guarantee to Cogentrix Energy of Alamosa for a solar energy project. A Cogentrix press release reported: The loan guarantee will support the Alamosa Solar Generating Project, a 30 megawatt (MW) […]
NREL: Big Green Empire
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) located in beautiful Golden, Colorado, is the federal government’s primary research facility for renewable energy for the Department of Energy (DOE). According to its Web site, NREL has enjoyed an enormous budget increase over the last two years. As the economy slowed in 2007, NREL saw its budget decrease […]
Being "green" isn't cheap for taxpayers or ratepayers
The Department of Energy just announced that Colorado Springs-based Neumann Systems Group, Inc. is one of four DOE grant recipients to study carbon-capture systems in order to fight global warming. Neumann will get $7,165,423 of more than $67 million in taxpayer funds for the “project, located at the Colorado Springs Drake #7 power plant, [which] […]
NREL's fuel fantasies
The Wall Street Journal published published a brief editorial titled “Cellulosic Ethanol and Unicorns” blasting the government’s unrealistic expectations about the commercially mythical fuel cellulosic ethanol, “second-generation fuels made from stocks like switchgrass or the wood chips that George W. Bush invoked in his 2006 State of the Union.” At the time of Bush’s speech, […]
