Last Wednesday, like so many others likely did, I found myself watching President Obama's State of the Union address. Now, admittedly, a sentence like that kind of invites a whole lot of thoughts and opinions, but I'm not thinking much about that—I'm just using it for a springboard for my actual topic.
So, I was watching the State of the Union, and I was paying particular attention to all his comments about clean energy. And while President Obama was talking about his plans and goals for the future, it made me think of a lot of the work that EERE is already doing. But, I thought, most people don't know some of this stuff exists, do they?
So here are some of the resources I was thinking about last Wednesday:
- Incentives for Energy Efficiency: While the President was mostly talking in the future tense, there are currently active rebates for purchasing energy efficient appliances or tax credits for various energy efficient or renewable energy upgrades.
- Clean Energy Facilities: Again, the President was talking about the future, but you might not be aware of the sort of things the U.S. Department of Energy and the Office of EERE fund. Most of it is funding for research (which is what DOE does, generally), but there's a lot of activity going on in general. (Of course, these are press releases, and press releases are not always the most exciting reading, so I apologize for that.)
- Recovery Act Funding: Did you know that EERE got about $16 billion dollars for Recovery Act funding? The Recovery Act, or "stimulus plan," includes a lot of new projects and research, and you can see what EERE is doing with its funding on its Recovery Act Web site. (This, too, is very dry reading. Don't worry, the last link is better.)
- Success Stories: And, throughout his speech, the President referred to a number of success stories. All these stories are about real people and real lives, and some are pretty fun reads.
It sounds like there may be more coming in the future—goodness knows clean energy seems to be a big topic these days—but for now, it's always interesting, I think, to know where you can go if you want to know a little more about what's going on right now!