The NY Times asks a good question related to basic energy research. Given that the world needs cheap, green energy, why aren't more US top research nerds working on this topic? Part of the answer is related to our global endowments of fossil fuels, increased ability to access them (i.e fracking) combined with the absence of a carbon tax. Together, these two factors lead to low energy prices and hence a lower rate of return on investments in alternative energy. But, the new point I would like to make is that we don't have the equivalent of the NSF or the NIH in the case of energy. Instead, the Department of Energy makes the mistake of giving "The National Labs" a monopoly on $. According to this budget document, the DOE spends around $9 billion a year on energy related research. For example, $1.2 billion of this goes to the Oak Ridge National Lab each year.
Folks, recall what the word opportunity cost means. Suppose we shut down some of these National Labs (I recognize that their Congressional Reps might not vote in favor of this) and instead created a new branch of the NSF dedicated to energy research. Nerds at research universities would compete for this funding and research would sharply accelerate. Monopoly is dangerous. We need more competition in our market economy!
UPDATE: I should add that this concentration of research funds at the National Labs has frustrated some of my research and limited my ability to run some field experiments related to increasing household energy efficiency. In an open competition for such research funds, would the National Labs researchers win? If these individuals worked at research universities, rather than being concentrated at Labs --- would they do better research? I realize that there are some national security issues here related to some technologies but this appears to be a relic of the Cold War and an excuse for erecting barriers to entry that protect the incumbents from competition.