From cleantechnica:news I covered in November
South Carolina To Lead US With $98 Million World-Class Wind Center
In its largest single award ever; Clemson University has received a $45 million grant from the Department of Energy (and an additional $53 million in matching funds) to construct and operate a large-scale facility that will test wind energy drive train components at the research campus; placing one of the most important sites for US wind energy research and development in South Carolina...
I am not against situating more renewable energy development in the states that we need votes on in order to get a climate and energy bill passed. Quite the opposite.
I think it is an excellent strategery on the part of the Obama administration, (through its DOE) to try and get buy-in on the clean energy economy to spread out to more Southern states. MIT in Massachusetts and UCBerkeley in California generate clean energy voters in those states, and we need to get more in more states if we are to prevent climate meltdown.
That's $45 million well spent on a very worthy cause:
The funds will develop a high-tech facility at the campus to test the next generation of wind turbines in the US. Now that state-of-the-art turbine sizes have increased with each new turbine, existing drive train testing facilities have become obsolete.
The five-year DOE grant will pay to help develop large-scale turbines that don’t yet exist in the United States, according...
But, should Senator Graham (who, like all but two Senate Republicans; has never yet voted with Democrats for clean energy or the environment) be calling out Senator Nelson, whose vote also needed to be purchased for a worthy cause?