In his State of the Union Address for 2007, President George W. Bush called for a 22% boost in federal grants for investigation and development of alternative energy. Nonetheless, in a speech he gave soon right after, he stated to those assembled, ” I recognize that there has been some interesting mixed signals in relation to funding”.
Exactly where the mixed signals had been coming from concerned the reality that at the identical time the President was calling on much more government backing for option energy analysis and development, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of Golden, Colorado was laying off workers and contractors left and right. Apparently, the Laboratory got the hint, mainly because soon immediately after the State of the Union Address, everyone was re-hired. The second speech of the President’s was in fact given at the NREL where he pointed out that there is nearly unanimous public support for federal backing through research grants, tax breaks, and other financial incentives of investigation and development of option power sources.
The NREL may be the nation’s leading component of the National Bioenergy Center, a “virtual” center that has no central bricks and mortar office. The NREL’s raison d’etre is the advancing of the US Department of Energy’s and also the United States’ alternative power objectives. The laboratory’s field researchers and staff scientists, in the words of Laboratory Director Dan Arvizu, “support important market objectives to accelerate research from scientific innovations to market-viable alternative energy solutions. At the core of this strategic direction are NREL’s investigation and technology development areas. These areas span from understanding renewable resources for energy, to the conversion of these resources to renewable electricity and fuels, and ultimately to the use of renewable electricity and fuels in homes, commercial buildings, and vehicles.” The federally-backed Laboratory directly helps along the United States’ objectives for discovering renewable alternative fuels for powering our economy and our lifestyles.
The NREL is set up to have a number of areas of expertise in alternative power investigation and development. It spearheads research and development efforts into renewable sources of electricity; these would include such things as solar power, wind power, biomass power, and geothermal power. It also spearheads research and development of renewable fuels for powering our vehicles which include biomass and biodiesel fuels and hydrogen fuel cells. Then, it seeks to develop plans for integrated program enginnering; this contains bringing alternative energy into play within buildings, electrical grids and delivery systems, and transportation infrastructures. The Laboratory is also set up for strategic development and analysis of alternative power objectives by means of the forces of economics, industry analysis and organizing, and alternative power investment portfolios structurings.
The NREL is additionally equipped with a Technology Transfer Workplace. This Office supports laboratory scientists and engineers in the practical application of and capacity to make a living from their expertise and the technologies they develop. NREL’s study and development staff and its facilities are recognized for their remarkable prowess by private industry, which is reflected in the hundreds of collaborative projects and licensed technologies that the Laboratory now has with both public and private partners.