Ethiopian Review

Boy, the Energy Department is really having trouble practicing the energy efficiency it keeps preaching: The latest inspector general’s report found that the DOE often neglects to turn down the thermostat, wasting millions of dollars in energy every year.

The latest report found that “the Energy Department failed in many cases to use controls on heating, ventilation and air conditioning that are a primary means of conserving energy during non-working hours,” as Dow Jones Newswires put it. That could have cost the DOE more than $11 million.

In May, government inspectors found the Energy Department tended to leave computer monitors on, wasting electricity worth more than $1 million a year. The White House has trouble with energy efficiency as well.

In some cases, according to the latest report, DOE buildings simply didn’t have controls to automatically regulate the temperature. In other cases, they had the controls but didn’t know how to use them. Don’t look now, but that includes Los Alamos National Laboratory, whose “primary responsibility is ensuring the safety, security, and reliability of the nation’s nuclear deterrent.”

- By Keith Johnson | The Wall Street Journal