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posted by janrinok on Sunday December 11 2016, @03:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the about-turn? dept.

On Friday morning, Bloomberg reported that it had seen a copy of a questionnaire sent by the Trump transition team to the Department of Energy (DOE). The questionnaire includes 75 questions directed at the DOE and the Energy Information Agency (EIA), as well as any labs underneath the DOE's purview. The New York Times then obtained and published a copy of the document.

Although the questions are broad in nature, they seem to set the department up for budget and staffing cuts. They also appear to favor nuclear power and fossil fuel.

Questions that address cuts to the DOE's mission include: "Which Assistant Secretary positions are rooted in statute and which exist at the discretion and delegation of the Secretary?", as well as "If the DOE's topline budget in accounts other than the 050 account were required to be reduced 10% over the next four fiscal years (from the FY17 request and starting in FY18), does the Department have any recommendations as to where those reductions should be made?" A 050 account indicates national defense spending.

With respect to renewables and research, the questionnaire asks the DOE to provide a complete list of the projects shouldered by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which funds early-stage energy technology that would otherwise not be funded on the private market. ARPA-E opened its doors in 2009 under President Obama and works on battery research, biofuel production, and wind turbine projects.

Efforts to modernize the US' aging and inefficient grids also seemed to get a critical eye. "What is the goal of the grid modernization effort?" the questionnaire asks. "Is there some terminal point to this effort? Is its genesis statutory or something else?"

[Continues...]

[...] While divining the motivations behind the questions is difficult, some of them have potentially nefarious undertones. One of the questions asks for a list of all employees or contractors who attended meetings about the social cost of carbon, as well as a list of materials distributed at those meetings. Another asks "Can you provide a list of Department employees who attended any of the Conference of the Parties (under the UNFCCC) in the last five years?" According to the Washington Post , one unnamed Energy Department official expressed concern that "the Trump transition team was trying to figure out how to target the people, including civil servants, who have helped implement policies under Obama." Scientists have asked the administration to "refrain from singling out individual researchers whose work might conflict with the new administration's policy goals."

[...] The questionnaire also has pointed questions for the EIA, an independent agency under the DOE umbrella that provides energy market analysis. The questionnaire seemingly accuses the EIA of overlooking the costs of renewable energy when comparing it to fossil fuels. "Renewable and solar technologies are expected to need additional transmission costs above what fossil technologies need," the questionnaire states. "How has EIA represented this in the AEO [Annual Energy Outlook] forecasts? What is the magnitude of those transmission costs?"

Thomas Pyle, the head of the pro-fossil fuel American Energy Alliance, is leading Trump's Department of Energy Transition team, and he likely had a hand in assembling these questions. According to the Washington Post, Pyle recently wrote a fundraising pitch decrying "the Obama administration's divisive energy and environmental policies" and promising that "the Trump administration will adopt pro-energy and pro-market policies."


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  • (Score: 2) by BK on Monday December 12 2016, @04:53AM

    by BK (4868) on Monday December 12 2016, @04:53AM (#440220)

    You're reading the wrong financial statements. The 40% is a tax - a portion of jmorris' $100,000 that is already taken by current taxation. And if you're going to roll in employment taxes and total compensation into the mix, jmoris' $100k becomes $125k and your 40% becomes 33%. But we're still talking about lots of money.

    About 40% of that goes to [some programs]

    For top earners this falls to Francis might not be entirely right here.

    I realized that the first time he posted here. Did I miss something?

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 12 2016, @07:14AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 12 2016, @07:14AM (#440245) Journal

    You're reading the wrong financial statements.

    Look at the US's budget [wikipedia.org] sometime. The pie chart I linked to has almost 50% of the budget in Social Security and "health care" which is mostly Medicare/Medicaid.

    • (Score: 2) by BK on Monday December 12 2016, @08:02AM

      by BK (4868) on Monday December 12 2016, @08:02AM (#440258)

      Agreed. That's the budget. It doesn't change anything. It's immaterial unless you have something to add.

      The link you provide speaks to the expenditures - the budget. Jmorris asked about the revenue side - specifically how much revenue is fair to take. I asserted that anything less than the amount which balanced the budget was fundamentally unfair. I'll further assert that the fact that the budget is not balanced, even on paper, on any time scale, is criminal. Francis indicated that the balance should be taken from those that 'make all of the money' - which, while somewhat simplistic, implies a knowledge that those that 'make all of the money' are more likely, logically speaking, to have some of that money, at any given time, than those that make none of it (which is, again logically, everyone else).

      I'm assuming (feel free to correct me) that you are trying to offer a negative commentary on the wisdom of the particular expenditures. Expenditures are not revenues...

      But, since I believe that absolutely all expenditures not supported by revenues, at least on paper, are criminal, I am forced to agree with your position. The sick should be denied treatment for even the simplest things and should be made to die in pain, the elderly should be left to starve and freeze, the the army should dismiss its soldiers by the division, the air force should sell its bombers to ISIS* and the navy should scuttle one ship each hour, and the prisons should turn loose all they hold, all this until the expenditures match the existing revenues... or until the revenues are raised.

      *strategically this might keep some of the world busy not exploiting the chaos that the rest of this would cause.

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      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 12 2016, @08:18AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 12 2016, @08:18AM (#440262) Journal

        It's immaterial unless you have something to add.

        I already added what I needed to add to make it material.

        The link you provide speaks to the expenditures - the budget. Jmorris asked about the revenue side - specifically how much revenue is fair to take.

        And I wrote about Francis's terrible characterization which you accepted. One can't look at a budget and say, this piece is the sole piece responsible for the budget exceeding revenue. All of the budget creates the deficit, not just the piece you don't like. As a result, I found an easy 40% of the federal budget which wasn't tax breaks for the rich or bailouts. There we go.