President Donald Trump has reportedly tapped a longtime renewable energy antagonist with ties to the Koch brothers to lead the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
According to an internal memo first reported by E&E News, the president has picked Daniel Simmons to lead the Department of Energy’s office that focuses on supporting and developing renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. EERE‘s work currently includes investments in electric vehicles; solar, geothermal and wind energy; and technologies to reduce energy use in U.S.ย buildings.
Daniel Simmons’ Longstanding Ties to theย Kochs
Before Simmons joined the then President-elect’s transition team to the DOE in January, he served multiple roles at the Institute for Energy Research (IER), most recently as Vice President for Policy. IER is a Koch-affiliated non-profit think tank that focuses on โenergy analysis and free-market energy and environmental policy,โ offering reports and analysis criticizing plans to lower emissions and attacking renewableย energy.
Simmons is also currently listed as a Policy Expert on the Heartland Institute’s website.
Before joining IER, Simmons was Director of the Natural Resources Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Koch-tied organization designed to link state legislators with corporations and create templates for stateย legislation.
Simmons’ old boss at IER, President Tom Pyle, served as the head of then President-elect Trump’s energy transitionย team.
Daniel Simmons’ History of Attacks on Renewableย Energy
A quick review of Simmons’ commentary and publications while at IER, Heartland, and ALEC leaves little doubt about how he feels about the office he is now set toย run.
In a blog post for IER, Simmons criticized one of the federal government’s most effective energy efficiency measuresโefficiency standards for light bulbs. โDoes the federal government think we are dim bulbs,โ the post asks. Simmons calls the efficiency standards a โbulb banโ and encourages readers to order as many incandescent bulbs as possible from Amazon before the regulation kickedย in.
Simmons regularly criticized any federal support for wind power, as he did in this 2013 op-ed for U.S. News and World Report:
In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama pledged to eliminate federal programs that are โexcess weight.โ If the president still wants to keep this promise, he could start by tackling federal subsidies for windย energy.
He went on to directly criticize the Department of Energy’s investments inย wind:
DOE and USDA are important to highlight because they were responsible for almost half of the initiatives (36 of 82) in FY 2011, while DOE led all agencies with 22 initiatives. Additionally, these agencies have more discretion than other agencies to decide which projects toย support.
As such, GAO recommends DOE and USDA formally assess and document whether the success of a project depends on federal support. That would be a start, but ultimately the federal government should get out of the business of betting taxpayer dollars on energy projects and instead let the American themselves people vote with their pocketbook on which projects shouldย succeed.
Credit: DOE‘s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewableย Energy
In a blog post for IER, Simmons slams wind power for hurting farmers. This despite the fact that rural landowners are benefiting the most from wind powerโit’s already paying rural landowners roughly $222 million per year, and that figure is expected to rise to nearly $1 billion annually by 2030โand farmers are calling wind development โour financial future.โ
In yet another post, Simmons calls wind turbines โcuisinarts of the sky.โ
Though Simmons critiques wind power above all else, he has always found scathing words for solar as well. In a blog post called โGreengate,โ Simmons compared the failure of solar company Solyndra, which cost the DOE $528 million in loan guarantees, to the historic Enron collapse. (The DOE program that administered the loan to Solyndra is actually on track to net taxpayers $5-6 billion in profits, according to Bloomberg.)
Simmons has been particularly vocal about the DOE‘s loan guarantee programs, which he mis-characterizes regularly as direct spending, despite the fact that the program has, again, earned taxpayersย money.
There are dozens more instances of Simmons directly criticizing the value of projects that are run by the very office he is set to lead. In this way, his appointmnt follows one particular Trump pattern, echoing the selection of longtime EPA critic Scott Pruitt to run thatย agency.
An official announcement has not yet been made about the Simmons appointment, and the position will require Senate confirmation. Until then, Simmons will serve as acting assistantย secretary.
A version of this article is cross-posted on KochvsClean.com
Feature image: The 110 megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant in Nevada is the first utility-scale facility in the world to use advanced molten salt technology to store energy and deliver solar energy overnight. The technology was developed with funding from the SunShot Initiative, one of the EERE programs that Simmons has regularly criticized. Credit: Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewableย Energy
Subscribe to our newsletter
Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts