Department of Energy Still Using Obsolete Expensive Lighting While Telling Us to Save Energy

Ask any mother in the world….doing one thing, while telling the child the complete opposite, never has and never will work. One can hardly chain smoke out of one side of the mouth while touting the importance of not smoking, and actually expect to be taken seriously. The Department of Energy apparently does not have too many moms calling the shots!

The Dept. of Energy spent millions of dollars to “commercialize” light-emitting diodes, a promising energy reducer. The Department of Energy even has an entire website page (here) devoted to “lighting your home” with energy efficiency. Choosing modern lighting technology can reduce energy usage by 50% to 70%, according to the Dept. of Energy. 

So, after touting and investing in the importance of replacement, maintenance, and controls for energy efficiency, any citizen would think that the Dept. of Energy would at least have energy efficient bulbs in their buildings, right?

Surprisingly, an internal audit (here) showed that most of the Dept. of Energy’s 9,000 buildings still use obsolete fluorescent bulbs, some of which were introduced over 40 years ago. A very few are using light-emitting diodes, which the department spend millions to tell everyday citizens they should use.  The report also pointed out that the Dept. of Energy has a yearly electric bill of over $190 million dollars, $76 million of which is lighting, and that just switching to more efficient lighting sources would save American taxpayers roughly $2.2 million dollars a year.  The inspector general said that the switch to efficient energy lighting investment would pay for itself in just two years.

I expected the Dept. of Energy to at least come up with some reasonable explanation, but what they released was Al Gore’ish at best. Their explanation- some of the lights are in high-security areas and the ceilings are too high to get to. Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman for the Energy Dept., told the NY Times, “We can acknowledge there’s more work that needs to be done.” (Clears throat), ohm, yeah!

What little efforts the Dept of Energy has made to become energy efficient has just made a bigger joke out of the whole ordeal. Example 1) In 1997, the Dept of Energy actually invested in timers to shut off lights at night in a newly constructed building. Sadly, after 14 years, the Dept of Energy has still not purchased the central control to operate the timers. The timers have actually just been sitting there…unused for 14 years. Example 2) In 2008, the Dept. of Energy  created a new policy for taking their savings from energy conservation and reinvesting them in new conservation measures. However, this recent audit found that there was not a departmental system to track or calculate or identify any of the reinvestments of the energy savings. In other words, no one knows where, if, when, and how any of the “saved money” was reinvested.

The gross incompetence of the Dept. of Energy should concern every citizen in America. If the Dept. of Energy can not be energy efficient, then it proves our government is being mishandled to the point of failure. The Dept of Energy has very publicly asked, if not demanded, that businesses and private homes make investments to improve the way energy is used. Yet, they fail to ask the same of themselves!