Green Options

Last Wednesday, the Senate passed the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill (H.R. 3183), appropriating $34.3 billion in energy spending for FY2010. Although the bill made good on Obama’s campaign promise to shut down Nevada’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility and funds numerous Army Corps of Engineers’ water initiatives, the bill is shockingly silent with regard to Obama’s energy education program RE-ENERGYSE.

A recent article by TIME’s Bryan Walsh also calls attention to Congress’s stinginess with Obama’s Energy Secretary, Steven Chu’s proposed “energy innovation hubs,” to which the House appropriated $35 million of $280 million he suggested. This allotment is enough to pay for one hub, not the eight R&D centers called for in Chu’s proposal.

American progress in energy education and research is getting ridiculous.

Watching the race to lead worldwide energy technology, an editorial in today’s San Francisco Chronicle details the recent gangbuster investments into clean energy technologies in China, Japan, and Korea. The piece doubles the point by mentioning the recent rejection of President Obama’s RE-ENERGYSE initiative (for ‘REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge’).

RE-ENERGYSE trains students to take on the world of energy

Today, more than 100 universities, student groups, and professional associations signed a letter drafted by the Breakthrough Institute (read the press release) urging the U.S. Senate to fund RE-ENERGYSE, a program aimed at ‘REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge’.

With a name like that, who could say no?