The Washington Post's Dan Eggen reports that four Democratic U.S. senators are upset that Energy Dept. clean energy stimulus projects often rely on foreign manufacturing. The senators cited one study at a press conference yesterday that 80 percent of the stimulus money spent so far on wind turbines were ...

The Washington Post's Steven Mufson has a report on states allowing utilities to charge customers for the construction of nuclear power plants. This is happening because the federal government will only provide part of the funding for these new plants -- it's too much federal money for utilities to ...

The Energy Dept. inspector general has done a pretty damning report on the the Energy-funded home weatherization program, writes the New York Times' Matthew L. Wald and Leslie Kaufman. The stimulus bill gave the weatherization program $5 billion to improve the insulation of low-income resident's homes -- the program's ...

The New York Times' Erik Eckholm reports that a record 8.8 million low-income people have signed up for federally funded, state-run heating assistance this winter. The Low-Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, received extra money from last year's stimulus bill so it's not clear if the program ...

The Washington Post's Michael Shear and Steven Mufson report on the Energy Department's guarantee of $8.3 billion in loans for two nuclear reactors in Georgia: By helping to finance the construction of the reactors -- the first new U.S. nuclear power units in more than 30 years -- Obama is hoping to jump-start his efforts to pass comprehensive climate-change legislation, which has stalled in Congress in the face of GOP opposition. The president is also casting the nuclear initiative as a centerpiece of his plan to produce clean-energy jobs, although construction on the two reactors would not begin for more than a year. Or not. As I reported in my story on a possible "clean coal" power plant in rural Illinois, the wisdom of these Energy Dept.-funded programs is unclear absent global warming legislation.

As Ian Talley and Stephen Power report in the Wall Street Journal, the Energy Department has expended only 7% of stimulus funds the Department received in 2008 -- funds that are supposed to go to job creation and innovative energy projects.  The tension at Energy is between vetting proposals ...

Despite a public pledge to deficit reduction, including a freeze on discretionary domestic spending, the Washington Post's Alec McGillis reports that Barack Obama's proposed 2010 budget looks a lot like Obama's proposed 2009 budget:

The stimulus bill meant a huge increase in money for home weatherization programs, where state governments get Energy Dept. cash to go into homes and insulate, seal leaks and install more energy-efficient heating/cooling equipment.  The New York Times' Michael Cooper reports that the program is off to a discouraging ...

[caption id="attachment_5280" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Downtown Mattoon"][/caption] A tour of Mattoon – a central Illinois town with around 18,000 people – can be kind of underwhelming. The town is off the interstate and surrounded by cornfields. There are a few bars, a 24-hour grocery store with the banner “Bob Evans sausage $1.79-a-pound,” a “feed-and-seed” store, and, for the Second Amendment enthusiast, “Freedom Firearms.” There’s a community college – Lakeland – as well as a downsizing General Electric plant. When I asked Preston Owens, the city attorney, about local attractions, he answered, “Well, it’s just another Midwestern town.” Such modesty, though, disguises Mattoon's ambition to be the international testing ground for clean coal technology. The town will almost assuredly land FutureGen, an alliance of coal companies created to build the first commercial-scale “clean coal” power plant -- a plant that does not emit the carbon dioxide that triggers global warming. With coal used for half of America's electricity and one-third of its greenhouse gas emissions, FutureGen will demonstrate that what coal critics call “the dirty rock” can remain part of America's, and the world’s, long-term energy supply. At least that’s the idea.

The Washington Post's Alec McGillis had a great piece this weekend revealing that the $25 billion "green jobs" portion of the stimulus bill has, well, yet to produce more than a few dozen green jobs. It's a complex issue but the crux of green jobs seems to be this: If you are first concerned about global warming or whether federal and state governments use energy in an efficient way, it's a promising program. If you are first concerned about job creation, "green jobs" stinks.