Re: \u201cThe National Renewable Energy Lab is renamed<\/a>,\u201d Dec. 3 news story<\/p>\n Changing the name of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to the National Laboratory of the Rockies may seem inconsequential to the casual newsreader, but it\u2019s a true harbinger of this administration\u2019s brutal neutralizing of clean energy technology development in the United States.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to know what the \u201cLaboratory of the Rockies\u201d will actually be; maybe something like analyzing professional baseball in Colorado or such. Regardless, the laboratory will soon lose its position as the leading applied science lab in the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s National Laboratory System for developing marketable, clean energy technologies. This has been done primarily through NREL\u2019s long-term research relationships with American business concerns.<\/p>\n Three more years of slash-and-burn of these relationships will cause irreparable harm to American leadership in this critical 21st-century sector, allowing China dominance for years to come. Bad news for Colorado, bad news for the United States. Very sad.<\/p>\n John A. Herrick, Denver<\/em><\/p>\n Editor\u2019s note: Herrick is a former chief counsel for the Department of Energy\u2019s Golden Field Office.<\/em><\/p>\n Forty-one years have elapsed since constructed in 1984, but hey, it\u2019s never too late to make a change. \u201cRenewable energy\u201d is no longer permissible under the \u201cclimate realism\u201d Orwellian newspeak of the new regime. The buildings remain in place on the southern slope of South Table Mountain in Golden, but the National Renewable Energy Lab is now the National Laboratory of the Rockies. Wonder what they will be doing there?<\/p>\n