department of energy (doe)

smart grid jobs/shutterstock

An analysis from the US Department of Energy (DOE), reports smart grid projects created nearly $7 billion total economic output, nearly 50,000 jobs, and over $1 billion in government tax revenue.[read more]

submeter challenge

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Buildings Technologies Program finalized its latest challenge on Wednesday: an initiative to develop a $100 wireless submeter.[read more]

solar energy + natural gas?

The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has developed a method of combining solar energy into the natural gas production process to produce cleaner energy output with the same fossil fuel input.[read more]

research and development/shutterstock

A D.C.-based watchdog organization, had awarded this year's Golden Fleece for wasting tax dollars to the federal government's efforts to promote the development of small modular nuclear reactors.[read more]

federal budget/shutterstock

Energy is no exception, and some of the sequester cuts there may seem surprising, given the President's emphasis on promoting new energy sources. It's worth putting all this into perspective.[read more]

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced his resignation today in a letter to staff of the Department of Energy he helmed for the last four years. Chu's departure had been anticipated, but today's official announcement now begins the process of assessing his legacy and the speculation as to his replacement.[read more]

Wikimedia Commons.

America’s clean energy policy has gone through significant changes in the last four years: game-changing public investments in clean energy innovation, funding for ARPA-E, and the creation of collaborative science and research hubs to name a few. Nonetheless, policymakers and clean energy experts all agree that it isn’t enough to address...[read more]

A new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center calls for a “National Energy Strategy Council” that would coordinate and oversee the efforts of the multiple federal agencies, such as Energy, Commerce, Defense, and Interior, that generate our national energy policy. Chaired by the Secretary of Energy, the council would be “...[read more]

US DOE via Wikimedia Commons

As my colleague Clifton Yin and I have written recently, U.S. clean energy innovation policy is at an inflection point. The decisions made in the coming months and years will shape America’s ability to address its climate and energy challenges as well as its international competitiveness in the clean tech industry. As such,...[read more]

Green Buildings via Shutterstock

Buildings consume significant amounts of energy. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) in the Department of Energy (DOE) reported that buildings accounted for 72 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption in 2006 and this number will rise to 75% by 2025.  This is split almost 50/50 between commercial and residential...[read more]

Dr. James Brodrick, manager of the Department of Energy Solid State Lighting programAs the DesignLights ™ Consortium (DLC) gears up for the 2012 Stakeholder Meeting October 28-31 in Atlanta, GA, we had a chance to sit down with the meeting keynote speaker, Dr. James Brodrick, manager of the Department of Energy Solid State Lighting...[read more]

B&W inks MOU with First Energy for economic, siting, and licensing studiesThe Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W) (NYSE:BWC) and FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE:FE) announced July 25 that FirstEnergy and a B&W subsidiary, Generation mPower LLC (GmP), have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to conduct studies on the potential...[read more]

gyn9037/Shutterstock

One hundred and fifty-five thousand meters in ten states are still without power from the grid as a result of storms that occurred at the end of June.  The household occupants and business owners relying on these meters sweltered and tallied up the impacts of losses caused by that lack of power. Predictably, there were immediate...[read more]

With the growth of home entertainment systems, home computer systems and battery-powered devices, the number of consumer electronic products we own has mushroomed in a matter of just a few years. Consumer electronics now represent the fastest growing sector of residential energy consumption — and one of the biggest areas of wasted...[read more]

For all the enthusiastic comparisons of the cleantech sector to infotech or microelectronics that we've encountered in the last decade, one rarely employed analogy is turning out to be more apt than the rest: Cleantech seems just as capable as dot-coms and chip makers of undergoing an industry shakeout and consolidation at the same time it experiences growth rates that most other industries would envy.[read more]