Why would anyone want to abolish the DOE? According to one liberal commentator, it was because the department "was established during
Jimmy Carter... the worst president ever. Maybe the second worst. The votes aren't all in yet...
's administration and it perhaps sounds like it might have something to do with solar panels."
Jimmy Carter created it, all right, but solar panels were only a symptom of the real problem. The DOE was conceived in dark and pessimistic beliefs and forecasts that have proven totally wrong. As Obama might say, the DOE is on the wrong side of history. As it stands the department needs to either be rethought or retired.
The original legislation justified a Department of Energy because, 1) we were rapidly running out of fossil fuels, especially oil and natural gas; 2) as a consequence of this we were becoming increasingly dependent on energy imports -- dependence that made us vulnerable to embargoes and political blackmail; and 3) so therefore we needed "a strong national [read government-directed] energy program."
Even before fracking proved the dire warnings to be utterly wrong, we had for the most part taken care of our energy dependence. We significantly reduced any possible vulnerability to an embargo by diversifying our suppliers; over sixty countries were supplying us with oil in the 2000s. Our No. 1 supplier? Canada. Mexico also has been in the top five. This information makes "foreign oil," a bit less scary, no?
Then again the fear of oil cartels was always overblown; from 1980 until the mid-2000s, oil importers like the U.S. thrived while the exporters were the ones who suffered because of excessive dependence on oil revenues.
In the meantime, we've endured wasteful, panicked policies such as massive subsidies for the wind and solar power, and electric cars. Worst of all, Congress has saddled consumers with ethanol subsidies and mandates. These boondoggles cost us billions of dollars, and none of them are commercially viable in their own right. In fact, the DOE has produced no dramatic breakthroughs in energy technology despite 40 years of trying (and failing) to pick winners.