Waste of the Day: Department of Energy Is Irresponsible with Grant Money
Topline: The Department of Energy spent $1.4 billion to fund 654 carbon capture research projects from 2018 to 2023, but some were risky and might have been scientifically impossible, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Key facts: President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has already set aside $12 billion for carbon capture research — the process of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to help stop global warming — but auditors say there’s no guarantee that “taxpayer dollars are going towards selected projects that are more likely to succeed.”
The DOE performs “risk screenings” before awarding grants to determine if scientific experiments are logical and have enough money to succeed. Auditors found several instances where DOE officials identified issues during a project’s risk screening but awarded them grants anyway.
One grant recipient did not have a strong plan to address how Covid-19 would impact its schedule. Another was known to be at risk of duplicating its own efforts.
The DOE said the risks were resolved before grants were awarded but could not provide documentation to back up that claim.
The DOE also scores potential grant recipients on the scientific plausibility of their work, but $14.6 million was paid to a project that did not meet the DOE’s own standards. Researchers did not check to see if it was even possible to store carbon at their proposed location.
The project is now $5.1 million over budget and over a year behind schedule.
Auditors also said the DOE did not enforce requirements for grant recipients to review and report the risks of their work every three months.
Auditors reviewed 40 of the 654 projects. They concluded that the DOE “engaged in some practices that could expose taxpayer funds to the risk of funding unsuccessful projects and undermine the likelihood of project success.”
Background: Some companies hope that carbon capture will allow them to keep using fossil fuels, but only 45 million tons of carbon are captured each year. Scientists estimate the world would need to capture 32 billion tons to limit the effects of global warming.
Dr. Faith Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, says that solving global warming “means letting go of the illusion that implausibly large amounts of carbon capture are the solution."
When President Joe Biden announced funding for carbon capture projects last year, Basav Sen of the Institute for Policy Studies told the Associated Press that “We are headed towards global catastrophe, and do not have the luxury of time or resources to squander on speculative solutions such as [carbon capture].”
Summary: Not only is the DOE careless when awarding grants, but it is funding research that can’t possible work at the scale necessary to help combat climate change.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
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