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#Jennifer Granholm
tomorrowusa · 3 months
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The Biden administration is pausing new projects, for environmental reasons, to increase the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) overseas.
Natural gas by itself is the least bad fossil fuel. But gas cannot be shipped – so it needs to be liquefied. This process causes it to become more damaging to the climate.
There's also the matter of methane leaks associated with natural gas.
Donald Trump has already stated that on Day One of his dictatorship that he will "drill drill drill". Trump is an existential threat to the planet.
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gwydionmisha · 1 year
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I remember the big fusion hoax of my late teens and smaller ones since.  At some point, I stopped expecting real progress at all.
I’m cautiously optimistic here, given the source, etc., though I'll be happier when it all passes peer review.
We’ve a long way to go to practical reactors powering whole cities, but assuming this really does pan out and the death of Democracy and climate collapse are held off long enough, I might live to see it, and that is a light at the end of the tunnel moment.
So fingers crossed and lets keep funding science and technology, okay?  We need them no matter what Republicans say.  This is pat of investing in the future.
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nodynasty4us · 8 months
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From the September 10, 2023 story:
Granholm's entourage at times had to grapple with the limitations of the present. Like when her caravan of EVs ... was planning to fast-charge in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, Georgia.
Her advance team realized there weren't going to be enough plugs to go around. One of the station's four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary of energy.
That did not go down well: a regular gas-powered car blocking the only free spot for a charger?
In fact, a family that was boxed out — on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle — was so upset they decided to get the authorities involved: They called the police.
(Via Ground News, who linked to an outlet with a third-hand version of the story.)
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kp777 · 6 months
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'Real Solutions, No Bullshit': Action Targets Biden DOE Over Climate Scams, Greenwashing
"Now more than ever, we need real leadership from the Department of Energy to end fossil fuels," said one organizer.
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panicinthestudio · 1 year
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Why there are new assessments of Oppenheimer's role in history, December 26, 2022
Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons during World War II and is perhaps best known as the "Father of the Atomic Bomb.” But he was a complicated man. As William Brangham explains, there are new assessments of his role in history.
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businessbigwigs · 1 year
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Nel Hydrogen Coming to Michigan
Nel Hydrogen Aims to Improve Environmentally Friendly Energy
Nel Hydrogen announced plans on Wednesday to build a new plant in Michigan, cooperating with General Motors to make hydrogen a cheaper, greener energy source. Nel Hydrogen, a Norwegian company, makes electrolyzers, devices which split water into hydrogen and oxygen. General Motors wants to make vehicles which can run on hydrogen fuel cells, as well as use the technology for other purposes. Fuel…
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environmentalwatch · 1 year
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Decarbonization Grants
Biden Admin Pushes Decarbonization Grants
Decarbonization projects are getting $6 billion in federal funding as the Biden Administration offers grants to pollution-heavy industries. On Wednesday, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced the creation of the Industrial Demonstrations Program, a grant program intended to cover 50% of the cost of any project aiming to cut emissions from industries that include productions of metals,…
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jerseydeanne · 2 years
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You're kidding me!
Tough luck, the deadlines are over with. Again, energy sec is blowing smoke up your ass.
We give billions of dollars to a corrupt regime in Ukraine and nothing for the little people.
You pass this law and have given little time for people to act upon it. Which is a great big fail in my book.
I supply information not only for me but for you.
Please tell me in the comments whether you know about these programs. Did anyone use these valuable resources?
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pasquines · 3 months
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denimbex1986 · 8 months
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'Moviegoers who watch the closing credits of Oppenheimer may notice a familiar name. Writer and director Christopher Nolan's three-hour biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who led the Manhattan Project during World War II to develop the atomic bomb, ends with a thank-you to retired U.S. senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
Unrelated to Leahy's appearances in Nolan's Batman trilogy, this cinematic shout-out is about righting a decades-old injustice. Vermont's longest-serving U.S. senator played a critical role in clearing Oppenheimer's name 55 years after his death. And longtime Leahy staffer Tim Rieser deserves his own screen credit for the role he played in that process.
The Norwich native worked for Leahy for 37 years, mostly as his senior foreign policy aide on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Rieser's political savvy and deep relationships in Washington, D.C., earned him a level of influence rarely achieved by Capitol Hill staffers. In one of his final acts before Leahy retired in January, Rieser helped right a grievous wrong that ended Oppenheimer's career — one that, as viewers of Oppenheimer now know, was based on a lie.
In June 1954, at the height of the Red Scare, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission voted to revoke Oppenheimer's security clearance. The decision was influenced by Oppenheimer's past association with communists and justified with the baseless allegation that he was a Soviet spy.
In actuality, Oppenheimer's fall from grace was a political hit job motivated by his opposition to U.S. development of the hydrogen bomb. Denying the physicist access to nuclear secrets effectively ended his government career and left a stain on his reputation that endured long after his death in 1967.
Nolan's blockbuster movie, which is based on the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird, chronicles much of that previously untold story. But viewers may leave the theater thinking that Oppenheimer was never vindicated.
In fact, Rieser, 71, spent years working with Sherwin and Bird to do just that. His motivation wasn't just to remove a black mark from the history of one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. As he explained to Seven Days, Rieser also wanted to affirm the ongoing importance of protecting scientists who express their political views from becoming targets of government retribution.
The cause was personal for the former Vermont public defender, who lives in Arlington, Va., but still owns, with his siblings, their family home in Norwich. Rieser's parents, Leonard and Rosemary Rieser, worked on the Manhattan Project, knew Oppenheimer and had tremendous respect for him.
"It was probably the most memorable year of their lives," Rieser said of his parents' stint in Los Alamos, N.M. "My father, my mother and everybody else there just revered Oppenheimer. He was larger than life for people their age."
Leonard Rieser was 21 in 1943 when he graduated with a physics degree from the University of Chicago, site of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. The following year, he got married, enlisted in the U.S. Army and, because of his knowledge of nuclear physics, was sent to Los Alamos.
The Riesers knew little about where they were going or what they'd do there. For more than a year, they couldn't disclose their whereabouts to family and friends or reveal their activities. While Rieser's mother ran the Los Alamos nursery school, his father worked alongside such scientists as Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi and Hans Bethe.
The Trinity test, the first-ever detonation of an atomic bomb, occurred on July 16, 1945, which was also the Riesers' first wedding anniversary. Leonard witnessed the blast from less than 20 miles away, face down in the sand.
After the war, Leonard took a teaching job at Dartmouth College, where he later became chair of the physics department, then dean of faculty and provost. When president Lyndon Johnson gave Oppenheimer the prestigious Enrico Fermi Award in 1963, Leonard invited the physicist to speak at Dartmouth and even hosted him at their home.
Tim Rieser, who was only 5 at the time, doesn't remember meeting Oppenheimer, but he grew up hearing stories about the Manhattan Project and still has his father's correspondence with the physicist.
He cannot recall his parents discussing Oppenheimer's blacklisting. "I can only assume ... that they must have been appalled," he said.
So were others in the scientific community. Shortly after the 1954 ruling, 500 scientists signed a letter urging the Atomic Energy Commission to reverse its decision. But it would fall to the next generation to take up that cause.
Bird related in his July 7 New Yorker article "Oppenheimer, Nullified and Vindicated" how Sherwin spent 25 years researching the Oppenheimer case before Bird joined him on the project in 2000. In 2010, with the Pulitzer under their belt, the two authors tried unsuccessfully to convince president Barack Obama's administration to reinstate Oppenheimer's security clearance.
Others made similar attempts. In 2011, senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) sent a 20-page memo urging Oppenheimer's vindication to secretary of energy Steven Chu, who was a scientist and cowinner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. Chu never acted on that memo, and Bingaman retired from the Senate in 2013.
Next, Sherwin and Bird approached Rieser, whom Bird had known for years. Their interest in the Vermont aide had nothing to do with his personal connection to Oppenheimer, of which neither was aware. (Coincidentally, Leonard Rieser had once hired Sherwin to teach at Dartmouth.)
The biographers' interest in Rieser was a political strategy: A seasoned Capitol Hill staffer, he worked for one of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate and had access to high-ranking officials in the Obama administration.
Rieser said it wasn't until he read American Prometheus that he grasped the scope of the miscarriage of justice done in 1954.
"Until then, I didn't know what had happened to Oppenheimer," he said. "I don't think many people did."
Uniquely Qualified
It's hard to imagine anyone else on Capitol Hill who could have brought to the task of clearing Oppenheimer the combination of political clout, governmental savvy, personal motivation and professional autonomy that Rieser did. Because Rieser had worked for Leahy since 1985, the senator knew his parents. After Leonard Rieser died and the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich renamed part of the museum in his honor, Leahy attended the dedication ceremony. And because the senator shared Rieser's view that Oppenheimer had been railroaded, he gave Rieser broad discretion on the project.
Rieser had earned a reputation as someone who knew how to get things done in Washington. He helped draft Leahy's 1992 signature legislation banning the sale of land mines. He was also an architect of the so-called Leahy Law, which outlawed the export of U.S. arms to countries that violate human rights with impunity — an effort that made Rieser the target of a character assassination campaign by Guatemala's then-president, Otto Pérez Molina. In her book Sweet Relief: The Marla Ruzicka Story, author Jennifer Abrahamson described Rieser as "the conscience of the Senate."
Rieser was known for his dogged persistence. In the New Yorker piece, Bird described him as "relentless."
After Alan Gross, a U.S. government contractor, was jailed in Cuba in 2009 and accused of spying, Rieser spent years using back-channel diplomacy to secure his release, making multiple trips to Havana and enlisting the help of Pope Francis. The effort succeeded in 2014. According to the New York Times, once the deal was finalized and Obama called Leahy to thank him, the Vermont senator told the president, "I could not have done it without Tim Rieser."
Rieser brought that same determination to the Oppenheimer cause. In the summer of 2016, he penned a letter from Leahy, cosigned by Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), asking Obama to reinstate Oppenheimer's security clearance. That letter landed on the desk of secretary of energy Ernest Moniz.
"He's a nuclear physicist," Rieser said, "so we thought, If there's anyone who would want to clear Oppenheimer's name, you would think it would be him."
But reversing a 1954 decision on the security clearance of a scientist who died in 1967 was more nettlesome than it looked at first. However corrupt and flawed that process had been, Rieser said, Oppenheimer had lied to a federal investigator.
At issue, he explained, was the so-called "Chevalier incident." Haakon Chevalier was a professor of French literature at the University Of California, Berkeley who met Oppenheimer in 1937. The two became friends, and, in 1943, Chevalier and his wife dined at the Oppenheimers' home.
That evening, Chevalier mentioned to Oppenheimer that the U.S. government wasn't sharing its nuclear secrets with the Soviets, who were U.S. allies at the time. When Chevalier told Oppenheimer that he knew of someone who could get that information to the Russians through back channels, Oppenheimer called the idea treasonous and ended the discussion.
Oppenheimer later disclosed that conversation to general Leslie Groves, the U.S. Army officer who oversaw the Manhattan Project, but he didn't reveal Chevalier's identity. When a federal investigator interrogated him about it, Oppenheimer concocted a fake story to protect his friend.
Why would such historical details matter decades after the fact?
"Moniz was afraid of creating a standard for Oppenheimer that was different from those seeking a security clearance today," explained Rieser, who has a security clearance himself. Though he vehemently disagreed with the Department of Energy's legal argument, Rieser understood why Moniz wouldn't want to set a precedent of giving preferential treatment to someone based merely on their public stature.
As a concession, Moniz renamed a DOE fellowship in honor of Oppenheimer, which wasn't at all what Bird, Sherwin and Rieser had sought. In the meantime, Donald Trump was elected president, at which point Bird and Sherwin essentially gave up the fight.
But not Rieser. He made little progress during the Trump years, which often had a skeptical, if not antagonistic, relationship with science and scientists.
"Generally, when I try to solve a problem, I do everything I can until I finally feel like I've exhausted everything I can possibly do," he said. "I also felt it was so outrageous what had been done to Oppenheimer. It was pure vindictiveness and politics."
Carrying the Day
To make his case, Rieser had to show the government why the Oppenheimer decision still matters — a quest with personal resonance. After the war, Rieser's father, like Oppenheimer, was conflicted about the way the atomic bomb had been used. Having visited Hiroshima, he devoted much of the rest of his life to advocating for strict controls on nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Also like Oppenheimer, he once chaired the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit organization devoted to controlling nuclear weapons and other new technologies that can negatively affect humanity. Rieser was incensed that the government could exact retribution against scientists merely for expressing controversial or unpopular views.
"So when [Joe] Biden got elected," Rieser said, "I decided we should try again."
In June 2021, Rieser wrote a second letter to the DOE, signed by Leahy and the same three Democratic senators. When two months passed with no reply, he called "this guy I knew" at the department.
Ali Nouri had worked in the Senate for about a decade and had once sold Rieser a Ping-Pong table through Craigslist. After leaving the Hill, Nouri went to work for the Federation of American Scientists before Biden tapped him to be assistant secretary of congressional relations at the DOE.
Nouri replied to Rieser a few days later.
"'I think you're going to get the same answer,'" Rieser recalled Nouri telling him. "So I said, 'Then don't answer it. I'm going to write a different letter.'"
The underlying problem, Rieser explained, lay in the nature of the request. He couldn't ask the DOE simply to reinstate Oppenheimer's security clearance, because that would require a new hearing, one that was fair, impartial and, obviously, impossible, given that Oppenheimer is dead. Instead, Rieser decided to ask the department to "nullify" the 1954 decision.
Beginning in August 2021, Rieser drafted a third letter to Biden's secretary of energy, Jennifer Granholm. This one not only detailed the injustices and illegalities of the 1954 proceedings but also highlighted why the decision should be nullified. It read, in part:
Government scientists, whether renowned like Oppenheimer or a technician laboring in obscurity, including those who risk their careers to warn of safety concerns or to express unpopular opinions on matters of national security, need to know that they can do so freely and that their cases will be fairly reviewed based on facts, not personal animus or politics.
After more than a year of working on the letter, Rieser and Leahy got 42 other senators to sign it, including four Republicans: Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Ala).
Even with such bipartisan backing, Rieser said, he feared that the endorsement of 43 senators might not be enough to "carry the day." So he asked Thomas Mason, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, to pen a letter in support. Mason did so and got all seven surviving former directors of the Los Alamos lab to sign it, too.
Next, Rieser contacted the heads of the Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, American Physical Society and Federation of American Scientists. Though Sherwin had died of lung cancer in 2021, Rieser asked Bird and Richard Rhodes, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Making of the Atomic Bomb, to pen similar letters to the energy secretary. It didn't hurt that Nolan's Oppenheimer was scheduled for release the following year.
"What I've learned over the years in Congress," Rieser explained, "is, if you're going to take on a difficult problem, you have to use every ounce of energy you can muster and stick with it no matter how long it takes."
In late August 2022, Rieser compiled all the supporting materials into a binder, then bicycled down to the DOE headquarters and hand-delivered it to Nouri to present to Granholm.
"And then I waited," he said.
On December 16, 2022, Granholm issued a five-page order vacating the Atomic Energy Commission's 1954 decision against Oppenheimer. She wrote:
When Dr. Oppenheimer died in 1967, Senator J. William Fulbright took to the Senate floor and said "Let us remember not only what his special genius did for us; let us also remember what we did to him." Today we remember how the United States government treated a man who served it with the highest distinction. We remember that political motives have no proper place in matters of personnel security. And we remember that living up to our ideals requires unerring attention to the fair and consistent application of our laws.
"It had everything that I could have hoped for," Rieser said. "Granholm felt, as senator Leahy and I did, that this is as relevant today as it was 70 years ago."
Even after Oppenheimer's vindication, Rieser felt that his work wasn't done. Knowing that millions of people would see Oppenheimer, he suggested to Nolan, whom he knew through Bird and Leahy's Batman cameos, that he include an epilogue to that effect; he even suggested the wording.
Ultimately, Nolan didn't include it. While Rieser has no hard feelings about not getting thanked in the movie himself — Senate staffers are accustomed to letting their bosses take credit for their work — he wishes that viewers of the film knew the final outcome. As he put it, "It's important that people know there is another chapter, and an important one, albeit many, many years later."
Rieser, who now works as a senior adviser to Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) hasn't remained entirely in the shadows. In addition to being featured in last month's New Yorker piece, he will be in two forthcoming documentaries about Oppenheimer's life.
For one, Rieser was interviewed in the late physicist's New Mexico house. While sitting in Oppenheimer's living room, he remembers thinking, "If only my parents could have been here! None of us could ever have imagined that I would be doing such a thing. It's amazing how life does come full circle."'
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nerdwelt · 9 months
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Die USA investieren 1,2 Milliarden US-Dollar in Anlagen zur Kohlenstoffgewinnung aus der Luft
Die US-Regierung hat angekündigt, bis zu 1,2 Milliarden US-Dollar in zwei Anlagen zu investieren, um Kohlenstoff aus der Luft zu entfernen. Diese bahnbrechende Technologie könnte dazu beitragen, den Klimawandel zu bekämpfen. Die beiden Projekte in Texas und Louisiana sollen jeweils eine Million Tonnen Kohlendioxid pro Jahr einsparen, was den Emissionen von 445.000 Autos entspricht. Das…
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corrupcionenpr · 11 months
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Jennifer Granholm: el gobierno estatal no controlará los $1,000 millones para la instalación de paneles solares en Puerto Rico porque a la corrupción no se le puede soltar dinero
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Pues, tenía que venir la Secretaria de Energía Federal a decirles que el camino que proponía Casa Pueblo era El correcto desde el día uno. Y a obligarlos a irse por ahí.
Washington D.C. – La secretaria del Departamento de Energía (DOE, en inglés), Jennifer Granholm, descartó designar a alguna agencia del gobierno estatal la responsabilidad de controlar los $1,000 millones asignados para instalar paneles solares y baterías de almacenamiento en techos de residencias de personas de bajos recursos y/o discapacitados en Puerto Rico.
“El DOE no tiene la intención de seleccionar una agencia estatal para administrar los fondos”, indicó Granholm, al responder el pasado 31 de mayo, una carta del líder de la minoría demócrata en el Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Cámara de Representantes, Raúl Grijalva (Arizona), quien lideró el esfuerzo legislativo en favor de esta asignación.
Granholm dijo que buscará dar énfasis a la “participación local”, lo que puede dar oportunidades a grupos comunitarios, sin fines de lucro e incluso municipios.
Junto a varios colegas demócratas, Grijalva había escrito a Granholm el 6 de abril haciéndole una serie de recomendaciones en torno a la implantación del programa, incluido el evitar dejar el programa en manos de las agencias de los gobiernos de Puerto Rico y Estados Unidos que han estado a cargo de la reconstrucción, dar prioridad a los discapacitados de bajos recursos, a la contratación local y evitar imponerle pagos por el servicio a los beneficios de menos poder económico.
Demócratas y republicanos del Congreso han sido críticos de la celeridad de la Agencia Federal  para el Manejo de Emergencias (FEMA) en procesar los desembolsos de los fondos asignados a Puerto Rico, principalmente tras el huracán María. Mientras, los demócratas denunciaron el cuatrienio pasado las restricciones impuestas en el acceso a los fondos por parte de FEMA y el Departamento de la Vivienda federal (HUD).
Grijalva afirmó que “una de las principales razones por las que el Departamento de Energía fue designado como la agencia para implementar el programa fue porque los miembros del Congreso y las partes interesadas de Puerto Rico estaban decididas a asegurar que el financiamiento evite las agencias estatales y federales asociadas con retrasos de años que han plagado los esfuerzos de recuperación y modernización”.
“La distribución de los fondos sobre el terreno debe reflejar las lecciones aprendidas”, sostuvo Grijalva, en una misiva que también firmaron los congresistas demócratas boricuas Nydia Velázquez (Nueva York), Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (Nueva York) y Darren Soto (Florida), el senador demócrata Robert Menéndez (Nueva Jersey) y el congresista demócrata Jesús “Chuy” García (Illinois).
Además, Grijalva advirtió que los que viven en edificios con espacio insuficiente en la azotea “no deben quedarse atrás”.
“Las soluciones solares y de almacenamiento a pequeña escala que facilitan la creación de islas de microrredes después de un desastre permitirán el acceso a la resiliencia energética proporcionada por estos fondos”, añadió.
La secretaria Granholm – quien encabeza el equipo federal que tiene a su cargo supervisar la modernización de la red eléctrica de Puerto Rico y su transición hacia un sistema plenamente basado en fuentes renovables-, mencionó a Grijalva que coincide en que las personas de bajos ingresos discapacitadas son las de mayor prioridad.
En ese sentido, le informó que en marzo pasado tuvo una mesa redonda en Puerto Rico con personas discapacitadas, con la ayuda de la organización Movimiento para el Alcance de Vida Independiente (MAVI). “La mesa redonda se centró en comprender las necesidades energéticas únicas de las personas con discapacidades para garantizar que el diseño del programa los aborde adecuadamente”, indicó la secretaria de Energía de Estados Unidos.
Aunque Grijalva se expresó en contra de que se establezca como requisito alguna aportación de los beneficiarios del programa, por entender que erosionaría los beneficios de esta iniciativa, Granholm reveló que es posible que se exija “una pequeña inversión de los beneficiarios para asegurar la sostenibilidad de los sistemas e impactar a tantas personas como sea posible con los recursos disponibles”.
“Nuestros análisis muestran que incluso un subsidio parcial da como resultado ahorro respecto a las tarifas eléctricas actuales”, agregó.
Granholm no respondió directamente a la propuesta de Grijalva para que el DOE dé prioridad a las contrataciones de compañías puertorriqueñas de la Isla.
La secretaria agradeció que Grijalva propusiera que el programa quedara en manos del DOE y dijo que le tomaba la oferta de contar con él para ayudar a su equipo en esta iniciativa.
Fuente: elnuevodia
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Circle Cares About Nuclear Fusion
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reportwire · 1 year
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Fusion breakthrough is a milestone for climate, clean energy
Fusion breakthrough is a milestone for climate, clean energy
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists announced Tuesday that they have for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it — a major breakthrough in the decades-long quest to harness the process that powers the sun. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved the result last week, the Energy Department said. Known as a net energy…
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