'Renewable' No More: The Trump Administration Renames the National Renewable Energy Laboratory

[douglas9]

The Trump administration has renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, now calling it the National Laboratory of the Rockies, marking an identity shift for the Colorado institution that has been a global leader in wind, solar and other renewable energy research.

“The new name reflects the Trump administration’s broader vision for the lab’s applied energy research, which historically emphasized alternative and renewable sources of generation, and honors the natural splendor of the lab’s surroundings in Golden, Colorado,” said Jud Virden, laboratory director, in a statement.

He did not specify what this “broader vision” would mean for the lab’s programs or its staff of about 4,000.

The renaming is the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration to deemphasize or cut the parts of the federal government that support renewable energy, while also expanding federal support for fossil fuels.

Asked for details, the Department of Energy said in an email that the renaming “reflects the Department’s renewed focus on ‘energy addition,’ rather than the prioritization of specific energy resources.”

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02122025/renewable-no-more-the-trump-administration-renames-the-national-renewable-energy-laboratory/

[Blues Heron]

1. This is the kind of gaslighting that is designed for one purpose- irritate liberals. Expect this every day.

[Botany]

2. Just stupid on purpose.

And hey if the blue whale goes extinct because the warmer seas can no longer support the krill
that the whales feed on oh well and when wall street is under water oh well and when the salt water
from the raising oceans kill the last of New Jersey’s white cedar trees and when ….

[NNadir]

3. So called "renewable energy" has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with addressing the collapse of the planetary...

...atmosphere.

The experiment in the reactionary impulse to make energy supplies dependent on the weather at precisely the time the weather has been destabilized, having soaked up trillions of dollars, has failed.

Nearly three decades into the trillion dollar experiment the degradation is faster than ever, as I have noted by appeal to the Mauna Loa CO₂ Observatory data, many times, most recently here:

New Weekly CO2 Concentration Record Set at the Mauna Loa Observatory, 430.86 ppm

...An interesting and disturbing thing about this week's reading is where it stands among comparators with the reading of ten years previous. It is 26.57 ppm higher than week 18 of 2015. Of all such ten year comparators among the 2088 comparators week to week comparator over a ten year period, this is tied for the 20th highest ever recorded. The highest, 27.65 ppm occurred in 2024, in the week beginning February 4, 2024, week 5, which also gave the highest single year comparator, that with week 5 of 2023, where it was 5.75 ppm higher.

All of the top 50 highest comparators in week to week comparisons with that of ten years earlier have taken place since 2020. Of the top 50 such data points, the 10 highest have occurred since January 1st 2024. Overall, 15 of the top 50 occurred in 2025, which of course is not done yet. All of the top 50 such readings have taken place in this decade, 29 of them in 2024.

There is a lot of statistical noise in these readings. Week 13 of 2025 for instance, was anomalous given that it was one of the now rare readings to be less than 1.00 ppm higher than Week 13 of 2024, 0.94 ppm higher to be precise. This kind of event is relatively rare in these times, the last time having occurred in 2023 in week 7 of that year. In 1975, the first year available as data at the Mauna Loa observatory, 44% of the readings were lower than 1.00 ppm compared to the previous year.

Because of statistical noise, in my spreadsheet I keep a 52 week running average of the week to week comparators with those of ten years earlier. Five weeks ago, week 12 of 2025, this running average hit 26.00 ppm for the first time. As of week 18, it is now 26.12 ppm/10 years. This is the highest value ever obtained...

It is, regrettably, de rigueur on our end of the political spectrum to hype so called "renewable energy," even though wind and solar depend on backup from dangerous fossil fuels, all the battery horseshit and hydrogen horseshit notwithstanding.

I argue, and will not be dissuaded otherwise, that so called "renewable energy" is lipstick on the fossil fuel pig.

The real purpose of the "renewable energy" fantasy was to attack the use of the last best hope of humanity, nuclear energy. This baleful outcome represents the only success of the scam, a "success" that kills people, since fossil fuel plants kill people whenever they operate normally.

Have a nice day.