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Sen. Amy Klobuchar has asked the U.S. Department of Energy to investigate the steep increase in Minnesota gas prices over the past few weeks. Gasoline industry officials say regional gas prices have jumped 80 cents in the past month and 30 cents in the past week because of both unexpected and planned shutdowns at gasoline refineries. But Klobuchar said the impact of temporary closures shouldn't have so much impact on the price consumers have to pay. In a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the Democratic senator called on the Department of Energy to thoroughly examine the closures and timing...

Steven Chu, the retiring Secretary of Energy, is blaming the power outage at the Superbowl on the Republicans. Steven Chu had arranged to have the Superbowl completely powered by solar panels as a final act of demonstrating the reliability and feasibility of solar power. To accomplish it, he had asked the Food Stamp President to request Congress to change the day/night ratio to 80% daylight versus 20% night to support the increased light requirements. The Republicans laughed off the request and the resultant unexpected darkness rendered the solar panels inoperable. The battery and generator backups proved to be up to...

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced his resignation from the Obama Administration this week. Chu had clashed frequently with critics of Obama's so-called green investment approach. He took the occasion of his pending departure to fire off a final volley at these critics. “Much as these people would like to portray the bankruptcies of a large number of recipients of government aid as a failure of the Administration's green investment policy, they are wrong,” Chu maintained. “Take the Solyndra Company as a example. The contention is that the $500 million we invested in this now bankrupt company was a waste...

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist frequently the target of Republican criticism, announced Friday that he was stepping down in the latest shake-up of President Barack Obama's Cabinet. Chu, who disclosed his decision in a letter to Energy Department staff, frequently clashed with GOP lawmakers over gas prices as well as government backing for green-energy companies like the failed firm Solyndra. In his letter, Chu took aim directly at his critics, saying the clean-energy efforts were a success—and blasted climate-change skeptics as trapped in "the Stone Age." He also scolded climate-change skeptics and urged a shift from fossil-fuels...

WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who won a Nobel Prize in physics but came under questioning for his handling of a solar energy loan, is stepping down. Chu offered his resignation to President Barack Obama in a letter Friday. He said he will stay on at least until the end of February and may stay until a successor is confirmed. Chu’s departure had been widely expected and follows announcements by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that they are leaving.

In the fall of 2010, the Michigan Economic Development Corp. — the state's "corporate welfare” arm — uploaded a video to YouTube highlighting the battery manufacturer A123 Systems. At the time, the company was promoted heavily by President Barack Obama, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow. Since then, A123 has shed money, laid off half its workforce, recalled products and seen its stock price plummet to about 26 cents this week from a previous high of $26. Now, just two years after the initial roll-out, A123 is...

We've had some unusual Cabinet secretaries in past administrations ...but never anything quite like the present bunch. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has overseen some $5 trillion in new debt. To help pay for it, he wants the rich — the top 1% already contributes more in income taxes than does the bottom 90% — to pay more for what he calls "the privilege of being an American." Geithner, whose department oversees the IRS, should have taken his own advice: As a rich American one-percenter, he once failed to pay his own self-employment taxes, and improperly claimed his children's camp costs...

The Obama administration was more vocal about the supposedly dire need to combat climate change toward the beginning of their oh-so-eminent reign, with President Obama out championing the cause at such august events as the U.N. climate conference in 2009. There’s been a bit of a lull in their alarmist-enthusiasm rhetoric in the past year or so (maybe they’ve figured out that concern for climate change is a luxury good during times of economic recession), but it looks like they may be thinking about bringing back the meme to help sell their horrendous energy polices in the run-up to November....

With elections less than eight months away, rising prices at the pump are threatening to derail a tenuous economic recovery. And President Obama, to mitigate political fallout, embarked this month on a four-state swing to promote his "all of the above" energy strategy, a broadly supported approach to increasing domestic development of natural gas, solar, wind, hydro, nuclear and yes, oil. But if the president has begun to or at least talk about some moderate sensibilities on domestic energy production, he hasn't changed a bit on tax policy. Every policy and campaign speech the president has given since taking office,...

Excerpt from Steven Chu's April 23, 2007 presentation at UC Berkeley. See transcript here:

Gasoline prices have climbed above $4 per gallon for regular at too many places across the nation. We know this because President Barack Obama has embarked on a four-day blitz to demonstrate his concern for high gasoline prices. According to the U.S Energy Information Administration, the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the country is $3.87 which is up about 30 cents from a year ago. The highest prices are on the West Coast at $4.23. The lowest, next door in the Rocky Mountain region at $3.62. Unemployment numbers are largely theoretical. At 8.3 percent (or 14.9...

This week's report is about energy and the crazy things the President, Democrats, media, college students, and professors believe about energy and why their inability to acknowledge reality and understand economics and statistical evidence places us in such great danger. Do you believe that Presidents can affect the price of gasoline?

Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC) gave anti-Energy Secretary Steven Chu an earful yesterday during a hearing on oil prices. McHenry ripped Che for the administration’s policies that have prevented access to domestic oil and gas. “You’re telling me my constituents need to buy a Nissan Leaf?” "My time is short, you've listed a long list of things that this administration has done. I have not yet heard that there are trying to increase the supply of American oil or our refining capacity or limit the regulations in the diversity of blends that are required. I have heard nothing from you today...

Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a House panel Tuesday that he’d give himself top marks when asked to grade his policies’ effects on energy prices. Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked President Obama’s top energy official if he’d grade himself with an “A minus” on “controlling the cost of gasoline at the pump.” Chu responded by saying he’d give himself a better grade than that. “The tools we have at our disposal are limited, but I would I say I would give myself a little higher in that since I became...

Automotive and green technology advocacy Web sites areabuzz with a story about a former employee of Fisker Automotive who claims the company released its $102,000-plus Karma electric sport sedan prematurely, in order to meet targets set forth by the Department of Energy so Fisker could access funds from a $529 million loan award. This followed reports from all over the Internet that Consumer Reports purchased a Karma in Connecticut for $107,850, only to see it totally disabled before the magazine could run it through its tests. The whistleblower story originated on the pro-Clean tech Web site Gigaom.com, and was...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Steven Chu. Remember him, the energy secretary, "the Nobel prize-winning" energy secretary who appeared before a congressional committee and said that he wasn't interested in gasoline prices coming down? Instead, he's interested in getting us off of oil, which is not possible. It is not going to happen. There's nothing else to use. It won't happen. It's pie-in-the-sky dreaming. There's no way we can get off oil. And if this administration tries to take us off of oil we're going to be plunged into a recession, and we're gonna be moving backwards to the seventh century and...

President Obama's Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, renounced his previously-stated desire to see gas prices rise to match European levels in order to motivate alternative energy research, telling the Senate today that he wants gas prices to fall for the sake of the economy. "We have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Chu said in 2008. When reminded of that comment today during his congressional testimony, Chu backed away from that position. "I no longer share that view," Chu told Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, today.

The storm clouds hovering over New Orleans today have nothing to do with the vestiges of Katrina or another imminent threat, and instead result from the NFL’s Saints’, team-sponsored reward system for purposefully injuring and maiming opponents. The allegations of gross impropriety center around Gregg Williams, a tough-guy-wannabe and former defensive coordinator as well as aloofly defiant head coach Sean Payton. Both men and team management had been warned repeatedly about the illegality of such practice yet they blatantly defied league orders and endorsed the continued practice of financial incentives for inflicting significant harm to opposing players. There is a...

The U.S. government last year announced a $10 million award, dubbed the “L Prize,” for any manufacturer that could create a “green” but affordable light bulb. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said ... Now the winning bulb is on the market. The price is $50.

March 1, 2012 Gingrich: Sec'y Chu should be fired 2012 candidate lashes out over Steven Chu's gas price comments

The Environmental Protection Agency is so out of control that it needs a major fix, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli tells Newsmax.TV. And a court case challenging the agency’s powers to limit greenhouse gases now before a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., could be just the remedy the agency needs, he said. “I am cautiously optimistic that the court will send this back to the EPA to be fixed,” Cuccinelli said. “I hope to fix it like a dog — snip — but that’s going to require a new president as well, so I hope the timing will work...

Newt Gingrich on Thursday called on President Barack Obama to fire Energy Secretary Steven Chu, citing congressional testimony this week in which Chu said his “overall goal” was to decrease U.S. dependency on oil, not lower the price. “President Obama must announce today in his Nashua address that he is firing Secretary Chu and replacing him with a pro-American-energy appointment,” said a statement from Gingrich, who cited a POLITICO story about Chu’s appearance before a House Appropriations subcommittee.

Consider this your spit-take moment of the day. After overruling Department of Energy auditors and losing $535 million on Solyndra, as well as a number of other green-tech flops, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu gives himself a pretty good grade as a steward of public funds. In fact, after Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) asks him to assign himself a grade, Chu goes one better than Barack Obama’s one-year self-assessment of a “good, solid B-plus”:

Gasoline: As pump prices hit $4 a gallon, Energy Secretary Steven Chu admits the administration has no interest in bringing them down. Is it any wonder Democrats are growing increasingly agitated with this White House?

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Hybrid vehicle maker Bright Automotive has announced plans to close, blasting the Department of Energy for failing to finalize a loan that the firm says would have kept it afloat. In a letter dated Tuesday to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Bright CEO Reuben Munger and COO Mike Donoughe said they were withdrawing their application for a $314 million loan and winding down their operations. The executives claimed they had been strung along for the past few years as the government insisted on increasingly stringent loan requirements. "The actions -- or better said 'lack of action' --...

The Energy Department isn’t working to lower gasoline prices directly, Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday after a Republican lawmaker scolded him for his now-infamous 2008 comment that gas prices in the U.S. should be as high as in Europe. Instead, DOE is working to promote alternatives such as biofuels and electric vehicles, Chu told House appropriators during a hearing on DOE’s budget. But Americans need relief now, Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.) said — not high gasoline prices that could eventually push them to alternatives. “I can’t look at motivations. I have to look at results. And under this administration the...

"When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal… under my plan... electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket… coal power plants, natural gas… you name it… whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was...” However today, the Democratic administration is trying to project a different image of being supportive of working class Americans. The White House and its allies in the press are presenting a narrative of being frustrated and confused about not being able to lower the price of gas for consumers. However..."

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu vigorously assailed what he labeled “the GOP’s simplistic approach to energy policy. They are fixated on the notion that increased supplies are the answer. They would have the American people believe that increased supplies will improve availability of gasoline. Well, I’ve got news for them. Americans aren’t as stupid as they think.” Chu mocked Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s promise to roll back gasoline prices to $2.50 per gallon, calling it “an attempt to turn back to the failed policies of the past. The crux of this Administration’s efforts on the energy front have...

Chu: Expect more loan guarantee failuresBy Ben Geman - 02/10/12 05:47 PM ET Energy Secretary Steven Chu again warned Friday that more recipients of Energy Department green technology loan guarantees will likely collapse even as he touted the strength of the program overall. The warning comes as many Republicans are continuing to assail the green energy loan program as a risky use of taxpayer dollars. “We have always known that there were inherent risks in backing innovative technologies at full commercial scale, and it is very likely that there will be other companies in the portfolio that won’t succeed,” Chu...

Energy Secretary Chu defends loan program as White House report loomsBy Andrew Restuccia - 02/08/12 10:09 AM ET Just days before the White House unveils a post-Solyndra review of the Energy Department’s loan program, Energy Secretary Steven Chu defended the program Wednesday against sustained Republican attacks. Chu said the Energy Department made a series of changes to the program before and after the collapse of Solyndra, the California solar panel maker that received a $535 million loan guarantee in 2009. “Long before Solyndra became a common word, we have been looking at how, in everything we do in the Department...

As the U.S. government Venture Capitalist-in-Chief (and President) Barack Obama and his Department of Energy investment guru (and Energy Secretary) Steven Chu pour other peoples’ money into their favorite “clean” technology schemes, private backers appear to be following them off the cliff, “as publicly traded battery makers watched their stocks tank and their businesses stumble,” according to a Dow Jones report late last month. According to a Dow Jones-owned industry tracker called VentureSource, private investors put $372.7 million into 14 battery deals over the first three quarters of 2011. Whether they would have transferred so much cash into the...

The Department of Energy announced on Friday it would not complete a low-interest, $730 million loan toSeverstal North America, after it had given the company a conditional commitment in July under its Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program. DOE gave no reason for its disapproval of the loan, but it had come under scrutiny about its judgment after the collapse of solar company Solyndra, which was lent $535 million in taxpayer dollars. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa called upon Energy Secretary Stephen Chu to revisit the Severstal project – which would modernize its facility in Dearborn,...

Corruption: The Secretary of Energy takes responsibility for and defends the granting of a half-billion-dollar-loan guarantee to an imploding solar panel maker. But that's not where the campaign donor buck stopped. In testimony Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Steven Chu, caught in a tangled web of administration deceit regarding a $535 million guaranteed loan to Solyndra, tried but failed to continue the administration line that the affair was just a good-faith bet that went bad. "As the Secretary of Energy, the final decisions on Solyndra were mine, and I made them with the best interest of the...

Industrial Policy: Not only do taxpayers subsidize failing green energy here, they may soon be on the hook for a Department of Energy loan to a firm owned by a Russian billionaire. Just say nyet. When a foreign firm wants to build a facility in the U.S. that hires American workers and pays American taxes, we welcome it. We'd prefer they do it with their own money, not rely on this administration's failed industrial policy to provide them with a huge taxpayer-backed loan — especially when it's owned by a billionaire who doesn't need the help. The administration's latest green...

WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday that no one from the White House ever contacted him to make a political decision on a half-billion-dollar loan to a California solar company that later went bankrupt. Testifying under oath on a widening controversy, Chu said he was unaware of his staff predictions in 2009 that Solyndra was likely to face severe cash-flow problems. He said that market changes which led to a steep decline in the price of solar panels were "totally unexpected." Solyndra went belly-up after getting the $528 million loan from the government, and Chu told the House...

With Energy Secretary Steven Chu set to testify Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the government’s $573 million loan to failed solar panel maker Solyndra, an explosive new list of energy loan amounts to President Obama’s top fundraisers, bundlers, and supporters has been released by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer, author of Throw Them All Out. As the list reveals, 80 percent of all $20.5 billion in Department of Energy loans went to President Obama’s top donors. Furthermore, some of those dwarf in size those given to Obama bundler George Kaiser, owner of the now defunct Solyndra. The...

Energy Secretary Steven Chu defends Solyndra loanBy Neela Banerjee Washington Bureau November 17, 2011, 12:42 p.m. Energy Secretary Steven Chu firmly pushed back against Republican allegations that political favoritism and bureaucratic incompetence led his agency to approve a $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra, in a much-anticipated appearance by the highest level Obama administration member so far before Congressional investigators looking into the failed solar equipment maker. A Nobel prize-winning physicist and Washington outsider, Chu remained as unflappable as any seasoned Washington politico while parrying often-repetitive questions for more than four hours from the oversight subcommittee of the powerful House...

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday that no one from the White House ever contacted him to make a political decision on a half-billion-dollar loan to a California solar company that later went bankrupt. Testifying under oath on a widening controversy, Chu said he was unaware of his staff predictions in 2009 that Solyndra was likely to face severe cash-flow problems. He said that market changes which led to a steep decline in the price of solar panels were "totally unexpected." Solyndra went belly-up after getting the $528 million loan from the government, and Chu told the House Energy and...

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday he doesn't think taxpayers will recover much of their $528 million loan to bankrupt solar firm Solyndra, calling the situation "extremely unfortunate" while continuing to defend his actions to prop up the company before its failure. Chu testified Thursday for the first time before the House committee investigating the Solyndra loan. He insisted that the decision in late 2009 to approve the loan guarantee was his own and "absolutely was made only on the merits." He said it was not influenced by political considerations. But he acknowledged that chances are dim for taxpayers to...

"The American people… just like your teenage kids aren't acting in a way that they should act," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in 2009. Chu was comparing Americans to heedless youth for resisting the left's environmentalist decrees. The comment came as the Energy Department embarked on a nationwide tour of 6,000 schools to hector children about "climate change" and as it propagandized the "broader public about how important clean energy industries are to our competitive position in the global economy." Lecturing the American people on responsibility and global economics was a comfortable stance for Chu at the time. Americans were...

(Reuters) - Contributors to President Barack Obama's campaign did not influence the decisions on government aid to the now-bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told National Public Radio. Chu defended decisions made by the Energy Department on the $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra in his first major interview on what has become a nagging political issue for the Obama administration. The interview, on Tuesday night, comes just ahead of his testimony to the House Energy and Commerce committee on Thursday, where Republicans probing the loan are expected to grill him on the taxpayer-funded aid to Solyndra....

On the eve of his appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee to discuss the Solyndra bankruptcy, the Energy Department has provided reporters with advance excerpts from Secretary Chu’s prepared statement. The remarks indicate that Chu will continue to defend the green energy loan guarantee program that gave the now-bankrupt solar panel company more than $527 million in taxpayer dollars.

President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., netted a $1.4 billion bailout for his company, BrightSource, through a loan guarantee issued by a former employee-turned Department of Energy official. It’s just one more in a string of eye-opening revelations by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer in his explosive new book, Throw Them All Out. The details of how BrightSource managed to land its ten-figure taxpayer bailout have yet to emerge fully. However, one clue might be found in the person of Sanjay Wagle. Wagle was one of the principals in Kennedy’s firm who raised money for Barack...

In an interview with NPR, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu vigorously defended the actions of the Department of Energy with regards $528 million in loans it gave the now-bankrupt solar energy company Solyndra. Chu told All Things Considered's Melissa Block that neither he nor any of his staff working on DOE loans program was swayed by politics and that even in hindsight there was no way to know that Solyndra would fail. President Obama's administration has been engulfed by the Solyndra scandal for weeks. At issue is whether the White House pressured the Department of Energy to guarantee loans for...

When Steven Chu, a Nobel physicist who had lately devoted his career to climate change and clean-energy research, was nominated by President Obama for Energy secretary in December 2008, it seemed like a perfect match. Until then, the Energy Department had actually played very little role in energy policy. Despite its name, the agency's chief mandate is to guard the nation's nuclear arsenal, and to clean up Cold War-era defense nuclear waste. In most years, about two-thirds of its budget goes to nuclear weapons and waste cleanup, while roughly 10 percent to 15 percent goes to energy research. The idea...

A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns many times over.” Doug Ross spotted the relevant excerpt of Schweizer’s book (h/t Ben Domenech’s Transom): When President-elect Obama came to Washington in late 2008, he was outspoken about...

Two “clean energy companies” which Barack Obama and Harry Reid have touted as creators of “green energy jobs” have joined Solyndra on the growing list of federal loan recipients facing financial turmoil and default. And a new poll indicates that voters don’t support the idea of agenda-driven federal loans to chosen corporations. Beacon Power Corp., a Massachusetts based energy storage company, filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, just one year after the company received a $43 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. And The New York Times reports that Nevada Geothermal Power, another recipient of millions in DOE loan...

President Barack Obama’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu has agreed to testify about failed solar company Solyndra before congressional investigators on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The hearing, according to committee staff, will be on November 17. Solyndra received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy — and taxpayers are burdened with that cost since the solar panel manufacturer went bankrupt. “We appreciate Secretary Chu making himself available and look forward to hearing his testimony on DOE’s involvement with the half-billion dollar loan to Solyndra,” Energy and Commerce’s Oversight and Investigations subcommittee chairman Rep. Cliff Stearns said...

Americans need to know why the Energy Department approved a loan guarantee for Solyndra when the company was so clearly troubled. But politicizing this mess to smear the entire renewable energy industry won't help the country or the jobless. This industry is estimated to have doubled its number of American jobs in the past two years. Demonizing it could cripple its job-creating potential. San Jose's SunPower is the latest victim. Fox News has made a series of outrageous claims about it, calling its $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee a scandal "bigger than Solyndra." This is utterly baseless. Fox, without a...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is demanding Energy Department documents relating to more than $4.7 billion in loan guarantees for solar projects approved Sept. 30, the deadline for financing under the stimulus law. Issa’s quest for documents — spelled out in an Oct. 7 letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu obtained by The Hill on Monday — signals a deepening of his loan guarantee probe, which joins a separate House Energy and Commerce Committee investigation of the failed solar panel manufacturing company Solyndra. Issa’s letter, noting “concerns” that the $535 million guarantee for Solyndra in...