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DOE NREL in Colorado announced RIF

DOE's NREL energy lab in Colorado just announced it is implementing a 10% RIF.

The cause for the RIF? Congressional gridlock hurting their expected funding. We'll likely see something similar to this at the NNSA labs.


** ‘Green jobs’ farm in Colorado sheds jobs after receiving $200M in stimulus funds **

10/4/2011

President Barack Obama’s “green jobs” initiatives suffered another major blow late Monday, as the nonprofit National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, announced a plan to lay off roughly 10 percent of its staff through a voluntary buy-out plan.

According to the Denver Post, the lab plans to eliminate between 100 and 150 of its 1,350 jobs. The Obama administration supported the NREL in 2009 with roughly $200 million in stimulus grants. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu visited Golden in May 2009 to promote the NREL as a beneficiary of those funds.

...The lab’s mission is to handle U.S. Department of Energy research and development programs.

NREL spokesman Bob Noun blames Congress for the organization’s failures. The Denver Post reports that he believes the gridlocked U.S. Congress forced the NREL to find $8 million in new budgetary savings.

“We don’t see any budget scenario where the lab doesn’t face budget cuts,” Noun said. “We just want to be proactive in managing the budget so we continue our core mission.”

Read more:
dailycaller.com/2011/10/04/
green-jobs-farm-in-colorado-sheds-jobs-
after-receiving-200m-in-stimulus-funds/

Comments

Anonymous said…
NREL is one of the good labs. This should not happen. Wake up America!
Anonymous said…
NREL is one of the good labs. This should not happen. Wake up America!

October 10, 2011 8:32 AM

America is awake. Congress doesn't care. Get used to it.
Anonymous said…
It just seems so unfair. I am not anti-science but I am for good science helping people not for science hurting people. There is something wrong with LLNL, LANL, and Sandia having 20000 people and NREL having 1000 people but who does more science, spends less money, helps the world, and has caring people? The numbers should be the other way around. And we ask ourselves how did we get into the mess we are in today? Maybe...just maybe it was because we spent way to much money on stuff that will never pay off
...sigh. Do you part to write to congress to save NREL.
Anonymous said…
an interesting reply. are there really 20k employees left? i thought llnl was down to 7k now. As for the money, it always goes downhill with any currency that relies on debt. we just need to reset everything. bailouts will not work.

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