The U.S. DoE has renamed the Colorado-based NREL the National Laboratory of the Rockies.
A statement available on the laboratory’s website says that the change, announced this week and effective immediately, reflects the Trump administration’s broader vision for the lab’s applied energy research, which historically emphasized alternative and renewable sources of generation.
Audrey Robertson, Assistant Secretary of Energy at the DoE, added that the “energy crisis we face today is unlike the crisis that gave rise to NREL.”
“We are no longer picking and choosing energy sources,” Robertson explained. “Our highest priority is to invest in the scientific capabilities that will restore American manufacturing, drive down costs, and help this country meet its soaring energy demand.”
The laboratory first opened in 1977 under the name Solar Energy Research Institute following an oil crisis earlier in the decade. Its name was changed to NREL in 1991 by President George H.W Bush, at which time it was designated a national laboratory of the DOE. There are currently seventeen such laboratories across the U.S. spanning science, nuclear energy and security, environmental management, fossil energy and carbon management, and energy efficiency and renewable energy.
Writing on LinkedIn, senior scientist at the Colorado laboratory, Craig Perkins, said it was “a sad day to see renewable energy officially de-emphasized at our lab.”
“I feel bad for all the people who came here with renewable energy as a passion and who now have to make some hard choices about their futures,” Perkins wrote. “On the bright side, solar power and other renewable energies will eventually prevail over the current political winds, guaranteed. It just might be elsewhere.”
In November, the DoE released a new organizational chart removing groups focused on energy efficiency, renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions.
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