Feds Unwrap $15M For Corporate Energy Reduction

As hard as it is to imagine, coondoggie writes with news that the federal government just unveiled a new energy bill that will offer $15 million in assistance to retailers who help to build and adopt energy-efficient technologies. "The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced the first phase of $15 million awards to retailers Best Buy, JCPenney, John Deere, Macy's, SuperValu, Target, Toyota, and Whole Foods Market. Commercial Real Estate Firms such as CB Richard Ellis, Forest City Enterprises as well as the financials groups also saw some of the money. Along with the money the companies will have access to the DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to design, build, tune and operate at least one new prototype building and to retrofit an existing building project."

Comments

Wow! $15 million!

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if they received $699 billion more.

Imagine what they could do with 700 Billion....

[FireStormZ]

Well we reserve that kind of money for folks who fail upwards..

Re:Imagine what they could do with 700 Billion....

[moosesocks]

The House agrees with you, and the bill failed to pass by a small margin earlier today.

Democracy actually worked here! The population seemed apprehensive about the bill, and congress decided that it was best to address the problem in smaller steps.

Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, where congress no longer considers these 300-page meta-bills an ethical or acceptable way to propose legislation.

It's also interesting to note that the representatives didn't overwhelmingly side with their parties, making it one of the few recent pieces of major legislation that hasn't encountered outright polarization.

All these things add up to a very promising sign. People seem to have finally woken up, and realized what's at stake.

Re:Imagine what they could do with 700 Billion....

[Hatta]

As much as I hate to say it, this isn't a good thing. I want to punish the corporations as much as anyone, but not at the cost of the entire economy. Wealth doesn't tend to trickle down, but poverty does.

As I understand it, that 700 billion was not going to line anyones pockets. In all these bail outs, the stockholders got hosed. In this bill specifically, there were no "golden parachutes". This 700 billion was the money that banks would lend to each other, and to real people to keep the economy running.

What does this mean to a real person? Well my job is grant funded, so as long as NIH funding doesn't go away, i'm OK. But my GF works in a screen printing shop. Now nobody has cash on hand to buy $10,000 worth of t-shirts. Instead, they go to the bank, get a loan, buy $10,000 worth of t-shirts, sell them all for $15000, pay the bank back $11000, and pocket the profit.

If everyone is pulling their money out of money-market funds and the like, the bank's not going to be able to find the $10000 to loan to the t-shirt vendor. This is where the $700 billion comes in. If the bank can't find the money to loan out, no one's going to be able to get any T-shirts, and my GF is shit out of luck.

Re:Imagine what they could do with 700 Billion....

[Anonymous Coward]

The Congressional Black Caucus aided this in happening by opposing regulation of the GSEs.

Re:Imagine what they could do with 700 Billion....

[Anonymous Coward]

From a 1999 NY Times article:

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. ...

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

Woo hoo.

Affirmative-action mortgages have crippled the US economy. Lovely.

Re:Incentives for what?

[eagee]

This is really kind of like waving a bag of pennies in front of a car thief and saying, "Look what you get if you don't steal cars anymore!"

On that front, it would seem the companies are hedging their bets that public opinion is moving to the side of sustainable energy. You can only count on a corporation to do what will make it money (usually). So if corporations are changing that could be taken as a good sign that public opinion is shifting (again).

I think this it's more like a governmental high-five than anything else. Hey you greedy bastards, you *did* do the right thing - extra chump-change all 'round!

Re:Incentives for what?

[SydShamino]

Why are we beholden to evil, unless someone pays us to not be?

Why are you calling shareholders evil? I think a better term is "short-sighted".

These companies might implement cost-saving energy-conservation measures if they were handed over for free. But if anyone tries to sell them cost-saving measures, the immediate cost is a large deterrent despite the long-term results, because most companies can't seem to afford a view longer than the next quarterly financials. However, show a tax savings on that report because of government rebates and the company can implement changes.

Is this the way it should be? Probably not. But that's how it is.

Re:Incentives for what?

[explosivejared]

You have hit the nail right on the head. Thinking no further than the next quarter is what got the US financial markets into the grand mess that they are in. We here a lot of political grandstanding about how the American worker is the most creative and productive on the planet, but I mean you know that statement's worth is debatable, but I know something for absolutely certain, American CEO's and stockholder's are the most short-sighted and unimaginative on the planet.

Re:Dear know-nothing

[mcgrew]

This is offtopic but screw it, it needs saying. I'm sick of anonymous asshate like the parent poster defending the sociopaths who caused the necessity to save the country.

That money didn't just go away. It went to extremely rich people.

You're not going to solve the problem by rewarding the people who caused the problem in the first place. We need some serious banking regulation in this country, starting with a cap on interest rates at some multiple of the prime. Outlawing golden parachutes.

The government isn't going to bail me out, but you want it to bail out the people who have the means to bail themselves out? Smartassed comments are needed a whole lot more than bailing out uber-rich sociopaths. Ever hear of Will Rogers?

"No bonus" boxes checked.

Energy use will fall now

[bagsc]

Good job, Congress! Thanks to your failure to save the economy, energy use will decline.

Bankrupt companies don't have to worry about turning on their lights ever again.

Re:Here's an idea

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It would be markedly easier, and less annoyingly "nickle-and-diming" to just use whatever centralized management setup you almost certainly already have at any decent sized outfit to just do scripted shutdowns or hibernation on idle. If users hate turning on their computers that much you can also have a scripted wake-on-lan go out 5 minutes before the start of the workday.

We do that at the tech department I work for, and it works fine. It would be much more work to track and punish users who leave their machines on, besides being wildly annoying for everybody involved. There are definitely nontrivial energy savings to be had by shutting stuff down when it isn't needed; but a mess of cat-herding user coercion is not the best or easiest way.

Re:Dear know-nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

We need some serious banking regulation in this country, starting with a cap on interest rates at some multiple of the prime.

Capping interests rates would not have prevented this.
The problem isn't high interests rates..
The problem is that the mortgages went from really low to unaffordable.

Why? Because people overextended themselves on the teaser rates and assumed rising house prices would allow them to refinance before the interest rate reset.

Re:Sorry, No democracy visible here

[Okian Warrior]

Here's the Washington Post take on the vote:

"It's no coincidence then that of the 205 Members who voted in support of the bill today, there are only two -- Reps. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) and Jon Porter (R-Nev.) -- who find themselves in difficult reelection races this fall. The list of the 228 "nays" reads like a virtual target list for the two parties."

Source: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/09/the_failure_of_the_financial.html?nav=rss_blog