The federal government provides an array of subsidies to increase the consumption of biofuels such as corn ethanol.

The purpose of Senate confirmation hearings should be to ensure that nominees are qualified and will faithfully serve the public.

The incoming Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, has talked in the past about abolishing the department that he will be running.

Tesla Motors recently announced that its latest model, the Tesla 3, will be released at the end of 2017. Almost 400,000 pre-orders have already been placed for the fan favorite that boasts a celebrity clientele including Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and George Clooney. For $35,000 you, too, can be the proud owner of the environmental solution of the future: a coalpowered automobile, subsidized by Uncle Sam.

Bloomberg reports that the Port of Los Angeles is increasing automation with the installation of self-driving cranes and other equipment. The automation is being partly driven by the need to minimize the use of high cost and troublesome unionized labor.

In researching an upcoming study on privatization, I came across an interesting illustration of the advantages of private science over government science. Private science focuses on efficiency and results, but government science maybe not so much.

Back in 2011 I wrote several times about the failure of Solyndra, the solar panel company that was well connected to the Obama administration. Then, as with so many stories, the topic passed out of the headlines and I lost touch with it.

Cleaning up the government’s nuclear weapons sites has become a vast sinkhole for taxpayer dollars. The Department of Energy (DOE) spends about $6 billion a year on environmental clean up of federal nuclear sites. These sites were despoiled in the decades following World War II with little notice taken by Congress. Then during the 1980s, a series of reports lambasted DOE for its lax safety and environmental standards, and federal polices began to change.

Today is Tax Day. Federal tax returns are due to the Internal Revenue Service with a postmark before midnight. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the federal government will collect $3.2 trillion in revenue this year.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is admitting that it failed. Last week, it announced that it will stop development of FutureGen 2.0, a federally-financed, coal-fired power plant in Illinois. FutureGen, and its successor FutureGen 2.0, wasted millions of tax dollars, and was beset with multiple delays and cost overruns.